President Trump on Wednesday repeated his claim that the GOP’s efforts to overhaul the nation’s tax code will not benefit him personally, saying that his finances would actually take a hit under the proposal.
“It’s going to cost me a fortune, this thing. Believe me,” he said at a tax-reform speech in Missouri. “This is not good for me. Me, it’s not so — I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that’s okay.”
“You know, I keep hearing [Sen. Charles] Schumer [saying] ‘this is for the wealthy.’ Well, if it is, my friends don’t know about it,” Trump said, referring to the Democratic leader from New York.
Trump later called tax reform a “higher calling.”
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Some analyses and media reports have suggested that Trump and his family do, in fact, stand to benefit from the tax legislation Republicans are moving through Congress.
House Republicans’ tax bill, for example, would do away with the estate tax — the tax levied on property transferred to beneficiaries after an individual dies. That tax is currently 40 percent on estates worth more than $5.5 million for individuals and $11 million for couples.
According to an analysis released earlier this month by NBC News, Trump and his wife Melania could save as much as much as $1.1 billion by 2024 if the estate tax is eliminated.
The Senate bill does not eliminate the estate tax outright, but grants more generous exemptions.
Trump could also benefit from changes to Senate Republicans’ tax bill, such as the expansion of a new tax credit for pass-through entities that would allow them to decrease their taxable income. Pass-throughs are companies such as sole proprietorships and partnerships that are taxed through the individual code.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Trump holds investment stakes in about 500 companies that could be affected by the proposed changes.
Trump says the current GOP tax-reform efforts will ultimately spur economic growth, creating jobs and boosting wages. He has also repeatedly stressed that he will not benefit from the proposed changes.
Democrats say the tax plan would ultimately be a massive windfall for the wealthy and would fail to create the growth promised by Trump and congressional Republicans.