Lower Tax Bills, Bigger Refunds
By Sen. John Thune
I don’t know too many people who look forward to Tax Day, but thanks to Republicans’ landmark Working Families Tax Cuts legislation more Americans received good news when they filed their taxes this year. Without action from Congress, the average South Dakota family would have seen a $2,500 tax hike this year. Republicans were determined to not let that happen, and our landmark legislation not only prevented that tax hike but provided additional tax relief. And as a result, the American people are seeing lower tax bills, and the average tax refund is significantly higher than last year.
The centerpiece of the Working Families Tax Cuts is permanent tax relief for middle-income Americans. In 2017, Republicans lowered tax rates across the board. Last year, we made those lower rates permanent. We also increased the standard deduction, and we made it permanent too. And on top of that, seniors can now claim an extra $6,000 deduction to further reduce their tax burden.
As its name implies, the Working Families Tax Cuts is also about providing much-needed tax relief to Americans raising a family. After Republicans doubled the child tax credit in 2017, this bill raised it even further and permanently linked it to inflation so that its value will keep pace with the actual cost of raising kids. This bill also created new investment accounts for parents to invest in their children’s futures and expanded 529 education savings accounts to allow them to be used for a wider variety of education expenses like tutoring, homeschool materials, and vocational training.
The Working Families Tax Cuts is also a game-changer for certain Americans who earn tips and work overtime shifts. Republicans’ landmark bill allows these hardworking people to deduct overtime and tip income and realize significant tax savings as a result. And they are already planning to put that money into their education, savings, toward groceries and rent, or to help raise their families.
In addition to the tax relief this bill provided for families, small businesses and family farms and ranches are seeing tax relief too. They benefit from lower tax rates, as well as the 20 percent 199A small business tax deduction, which is also now a permanent feature of the tax code. Then there are the investment incentives – like 100 percent bonus depreciation and the research and development tax credit – which are permanent and already helping South Dakota businesses invest in their employees. And this bill also protects a lot more family businesses, farms, and ranches from the death tax and the costly estate planning expenses that come along with it, ensuring those enterprises can stay strong and family-run for generations to come.
Thanks to Republicans’ tax relief, Americans are keeping more of their hard-earned money, and because the Working Families Tax Cuts provides permanent tax relief to hardworking South Dakotans, you don’t have to worry about a tax hike next year or in the years to come.
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The senator either forgets—or deliberately hides—the truth: America’s billionaires and millionaires have never enjoyed a sweeter tax deal than they do today. Meanwhile, he’s masking the devastating cuts to education, healthcare, research and development, environmental protections, and small business support—all sacrificed to feed an already bloated military budget that keeps expanding.
Now we’re forced to waste millions repairing the wreckage left by the Trump-MAGA era—a dark chapter when ignorance trumped evidence, facts were mocked, and policy bent to conspiracy and chaos.
funny how it’s the people who pay the most in income taxes who get the biggest tax cuts, and the people who don’t pay income taxes at all think they should pay less than the nothing they are already paying.
Math is hard
Sales tax exists dipshit.
sales taxes are state and local, not federal, dipshit.
“Math is hard,” because insidious Republican taxation levied upon us by Trump’s decrees has been woven deeply into the fabric of our very lives – from the cumulative effect of the Trump tariffs, and resulting rise in prices we pay for business-related and personal goods and materials – from the pending trade disasters from the Iranian War that we just “won” – from the shut-down defunded parts of government that were aiding and shoring up many parts of our economy until DOGE.
“Math is hard” like you say, and that has been BY DESIGN – to hide and bury the true scope of the takings.
Deck-chair rearrangements like a Thune tax bill provide little comfort, but much self promotion.
His gaslighting is getting worse and worse.
Hmmm. Could you please explain how all of these tax breaks (bribes to get re-elected?) affect the magnitude and acceleration of the national debt burden you’ll be handing down to our kids and grandkids? With our shared credit card debt now growing at the rate of 6 to 7 billion dollars EVERY DAY, making those 2017 tax cuts (which primarily benefit the wealthiest among us) permanent was a reckless act of fiscal irresponsibility. Would you manage your own family’s budget in such an irresponsible way? Is there any strategic plan whatsoever to slow down or stop our spiraling debt crisis? If so, let’s hear it! Please!!
From the Congress Joint Economic Committee:
“As of April 2026, the total U.S. national debt is approximately $39 trillion and increases by an average of roughly $6 billion to 7.3 billion per day. This rapid growth translates to an increase of over
$300 million per hour, or roughly $87,000 every second. Interest payments on this debt alone are over $2.8 billion per day. The national debt grows by $1 trillion every 100 to 146 days, depending on the period.
The debt is driven by government deficit spending, where expenditures exceed revenue, notes the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.”
again, Math is Hard.
if federal income taxes are reduced by a percentage, the people who get the greatest benefit are always going to be the people with the greatest tax liability because 1% of nothing is nothing, 1% of $100 is $1, 1% of $1000 is $10, 1% of $10,000 is $100, etc.
I asked Google AI about this and the answer I got was based on 2022 data:
The top 1% of earners, defined as those making over $663,164, make 22.4% of the total Adjusted Gross Income and pay 40.4% of the taxes.
The top 10% of earners pay 72% of the taxes.
The bottom 50% of earners pay 3% of the taxes.
It is astonishing that this needs to be explained to anybody.
Here is the solution: if you want to get a bigger tax cut, you just need to make more money. It’s easy:
Work harder, get a second job, invest wisely.
Here’s more math for you: A person earning a billion a year, and a person earning a million a year are both included in the top ONE PERCENT figure.
To get into the top TEN PERCENT of earners, you have to make in excess of $191,000. THUS: eleven lower ten-percenters equals TWO millionaires. That means it takes 5.5 THOUSAND ten-percenters, upper middle class and above, to equal just ONE billionaire.
The top one-percent controls over 30 percent of the total wealth of the US. The top one-tenth-percent, richest of the rich, saw 59 percent increases in their vast personal fortunes this past year. 59-percent more of the billions they have.
The bottom half of the US population, 50 percent of the total population, has control of about 2.5 percent of the total national wealth. There was no 59 percent increase of ANYTHING for that group.
Make sure you capture the disparities of our system when you’re flaunting your magical flat-tax math and telling the poorest that they are their own problem.
Correction – the top one-tenth-percent – richest of the rich – saw a 59 percent increase in their annual INCOME for the year, not their overall massive wealth. Still, though, wow.
Maybe you just hit the top 10 percent and had your first 200K year. Maybe you pull down a million a year. 3-million, 8-million, 20-million. You’re in the top One Percent. You’re still nothing like the top one-tenth-percent, the billionaire class, by magnitudes of a thousand.
boo hoo
So somebody else makes more money than you do, and you can’t stand it.
Why don’t you devote less time to complaining and figure out how you can make more money.
When you make it to a million dollars a year, YOU look at how hard you had to work to do it, then ask yourself if a billionaire got where THEY are by being a thousand times more intense than you. No. The supercharging of income is from achieving a position to game the whole economy at a large scale, with like-minded giants.
Yawn
Senator, why do you continue to try to rename the Bug Beautiful Bill? Is it just because it became so unpopular when so many realized it was mainly targeted to the elite wealthy. Social Security will be insolvent in 7 years and we have a continuing war again in the Middle East. Not a comment about either, huh.
Thanks for adding $4 trillion to the USA deficit
with these inappropriate tax cuts. The Republican
Party is no longer the Party of fiscal responsibility.