Exemptions cover trillions in corporate activity.
Gross ’20 [Terry, interviewing Jesse Drucker; April 30; Interviewer, M.Ed. from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Honorary Doctorates from Princeton University, Haverford College, and Drexel University; NPR, “How the CARES Act Became a Tax-Break Bonanza for The Rich, Explained,” https://www.npr.org/2020/04/30/848321204/how-the-cares-act-became-a-tax-break-bonanza-for-the-rich-explained]
GROSS: So you report that some of the tax cut provisions in the new stimulus bill - and the stimulus bill is designed to help companies and individuals suffering as a result of the pandemic. But you report that some of the cuts in here for wealthy individuals and rich corporations, these were cuts that were being lobbied for for a couple of years - ever since the 2017 tax cut package that was passed.
And some corporations, lobbyists didn't want those restrictions. They've been working against those restrictions ever since. So do you see this current stimulus package as a kind of opportunity just to give lobbyists and corporations what they've been asking for for a couple of years under the cover of the pandemic?
DRUCKER: If you go back just over two years, the end of 2017, the Republicans in Congress passed, really, kind of landmark tax legislation, which was then signed by President Trump, that was very beneficial, you know, that handed out basically trillions of dollars in tax cuts to big companies and to wealthy individuals. And to some degree, those trillions of dollars in tax cuts were offset, in part, by some new restrictions and new taxes that the Congress put in place.
What we've seen since then is that some of the new taxes that Congress passed to offset some of the big tax cuts that companies were given - that in reality, what is happening is those taxes have been undercut by regulations that have been slowly coming out of the Treasury Department. And now what we're having is, in the CARES Act, as part of a relief package to help companies and people hit by the pandemic, even more of the restrictions that were put in place in 2017 are kind of being whittled away.
And so it's almost like you kind of have this sort of gradual process over the last two years where you gave corporate America and wealthy individuals some big tax cuts. In exchange, there had to be some stuff to offset those cuts. And those offsets have been gradually whittled away by the Treasury Department through the regulatory process over the last couple of years. And now we're seeing even more of those restrictions being eroded in the stimulus package. So the tax cuts, which were once offset by some new taxes and some new restrictions, are gradually being whittled away so that it is potentially going to be only benefits for big companies and wealthy individuals.