John,
As families stretch every dollar this holiday season, America’s biggest retailers are enjoying something most shoppers never see: a deep tax discount. A brand-new Americans for Tax Fairness report shows that eight major retail corporations paid little more than half the corporate tax rate they paid before the Trump-GOP tax law took effect. Prices stayed high. Profits surged. Taxes on corporations fell.[1]
From 2018 onward, these corporations used the Trump tax law to lock in lower effective tax rates year after year. The result is billions in lost public revenue that could have gone toward lowering costs, strengthening public services, or easing pressure on working families instead of padding corporate balance sheets.
The giveaways didn’t stop at the corporate level. The same law delivered a personal windfall to retail executives. The CEOs of Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and TJX collectively earned over $1.3 billion in ordinary income since 2018 and could have saved up to $35 million on their individual tax bills thanks to Trump-era tax cuts extended again this summer.[2] While workers faced stagnant wages and consumers paid more at the register, top executives paid less to the IRS.
This is the pattern we keep exposing. Corporate America takes the discount, shareholders take the payouts, and everyone else is told to accept higher prices, thinner public services, and more red-tape requirements when they need help. Congress created this tax law. Corporations are exploiting it exactly as designed. And unless it’s challenged, these giveaways will be normalized and extended again.
Will you make an end-of-year contribution today to power the research that is allowing Americans for Tax Fairness to expose these tax breaks and fight back against a system that rewards corporate excess while families pay full price?
The truth is, this fight only moves when it’s backed by sustained pressure. Our research forced these corporate tax breaks into the open, putting hard numbers on what retailers and executives gained and what the public lost. But publishing the report is only the first step.
Americans for Tax Fairness is using this data to hold lawmakers accountable, challenge corporate lobbying, and block further extensions of Trump-era tax giveaways that drain billions from federal budgets. Every extension locks in lower taxes for the biggest corporations while lawmakers claim there’s “no money” for the things working people and families rely on.
We know how this ends if it goes unchallenged. Each time Congress renews these tax cuts, it deepens the expectation that corporate discounts are set in stone, while investments in workers and communities remain optional. That’s how inequality gets baked into the tax code.
Your support helps ensure this report doesn’t sit on a shelf. It fuels organizing, rapid response, and public pressure campaigns that force Congress to choose between corporate donors and their constituents.
Make an end-of-year donation now to power the fight for a tax system that works for people, not retail giants and their CEOs.
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Let’s keep organizing, exposing the truth, and holding Congress accountable until corporate tax giveaways are rolled back and working families finally get a fair deal.
David Kass
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness
[1] This Holiday Season, It’s Half-Off Taxes For Retailers
[2] NEW REPORT SPOTLIGHTS RETAILERS’, EXECS’ SAVINGS FROM TRUMP TAX BILL
