Andrew Keshner

Thu, May 22, 2025, 4:54 PM7 min read

It’s a tale of two tax cuts — and the differences can be stark.

A growing stack of studies show most Americans will be getting tax cuts under the massive tax and spending bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a single vote Thursday.

• This hedge-fund manager has made about 50% in each of the last two years. Here’s his home run trade.

• Trump threatens Apple with 25% tariff: Is now a good time to buy an iPhone?

• My ex-wife said she should have been compensated for working part time during our marriage. Do I owe her?

• This chart shows why investors should be worried about the latest bond-market selloff

• Ships are canceling crossings to U.S., and Trump’s new 50% E.U. tariff threat isn’t likely to help

Republicans are touting their megabill as a win for working- and middle-class households, and research released this week shows there are millions of households poised for a tax cut.

That’s part of the story.

The same batch of research shows the biggest windfalls in the House version of the bill would go to America’s richest households, as measured by the money they would be saving on taxes and the share of their income that would avoid taxation.

The bill would maintain the 2017 Trump tax cuts, add new tax breaks and soup up existing ones.

Also read: ‘Medicaid and food stamps are easy targets’: House bill makes unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and SNAP

What Republicans are calling President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has new features aimed at the lower and middle rungs of the income ladder, such as a $4,000 “senior bonus” for taxpayers 65 and older with income less than $75,000 for an individual or $150,000 for a married couple. The deduction’s value phases out above that threshold. Deductions for overtime pay and tipped income, meanwhile, apply to people making less than $160,000 this year.

The median U.S. income in 2023 was just over $80,000, according to the Census Bureau.

“This bill represents an historic opportunity to deliver economic freedom for working families, farmers and small businesses,” said Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. “The House has acted. Now the Senate must do its part and send this bill to President Trump’s desk.”

Changes to the bill seem likely in the Senate.

A typical family with two children could see their take-home pay increase by more than  $13,000 as a result of the bill’s impacts on wages and taxes, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Democrats railed against the first round of Trump tax cuts in 2017, saying they were tilted toward the rich. Now they say that making those cuts permanent makes a bad situation worse, and that there will be losers, too — including millions of people who might lose Medicaid coverage to offset the costs of the tax cuts.