IRS leaks reveal billions reaped through ultra-wealthy lobbying on the tax bill
A cast of dozens.
The latest in Propublica’s Secret IRS Files reporting is a crossover episode, combining leaked tax-returns of America’s ultrawealthy with campaign contribution data to reveal the incredible return on investment the rich reaped from Trump’s Tax Scam.
You may remember how Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (AKA the “big, beautiful tax-cut”) was a shambles of amendments and annotations, whose final draft was literally covered in hand-scribbled changes that handed millions to donors.
The new Propublica report quantifies the effect of those last-minute changes, and also reveals their causes — the handful of one-percenters who bankrolled senators like Senator Ron Johnson with $20m in campaign funds and reaped $215m back in just the first year of the tax cuts.
Johnson stunned fellow Republican senators by announcing that he would not support the tax bill, then pressed them to add the provision that allowed three people — owners of…
