Treasury Secretary Says 90% of Americans Will Be Happy About Upcoming Paychecks
About nine out of ten working Americans are about to find out firsthand why the tax cut passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and signed by President Trump is going to be good for them — and the evidence will possibly be in their next paycheck.
According to CNBC, the Treasury Department released the new withholding tables for taxes at a press conference on Thursday. Those tables show how much employers ought to be withholding from their employees’ paychecks for federal tax purposes.
While the withholding changes are voluntary on the part of employers at the moment, they must comply with the Treasury Department’s guidance by Feb. 15.
That means, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, that 90 percent of American workers will receive an increase in their take-home pay by the middle of next month.
During the press conference, Mnuchin also applauded Walmart for its decision to voluntarily raise its base wage for workers to $11, saying that it was something Americans should expect under the new tax plan.
“We thought that (tax cuts) would be great for the economy and we are thrilled with the number of companies reacting accordingly,” Mnuchin said, adding “(w)e appreciate what Walmart is doing.”
“We have been talking with lots of companies for a long time, and we are thrilled with how people are responding.”
Asked about increasing the federal minimum wage, Mnuchin said that while he thought “the most important thing is for companies to increase their wages” that “(d)ifferent companies will do different things,”
Among the “different things” mentioned by Mnuchin were investing capital back into their businesses or giving that money back to their workers.
That’s because “lots of things are going on in the economy,” Mnuchin said.
Indeed, we’ve already seen “lots of things” happening partially due to the tax cut. Walmart wasn’t the only company announcing a wage increase voluntarily this week. Banking giant Capitol One also said that they were raising their minimum hourly wage to $15.
Meanwhile, we had a bevy of companies giving bonuses to employees right after the tax bill was passed, including Boeing, Fifth Third Bancorp and Wells Fargo.
And, even though liberals decried the fact that some companies may use the tax cut to reinvest in their companies — Salon dedicated an entire article to maligning a quote from Mnuchin that the “purpose of the tax cut act was to put more money in companies so they could compete competitively with international companies” — that’s also a win for American workers.
Reinvestment in industry means more jobs and better jobs for the American worker. The biggest raise most people can receive, after all, is going from unemployment to or underemployment to well-remunerated employment. And even if you’re already employed, there’s a 90 percent chance you’re going to like what you see in your paycheck next month.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and there’s going to be a whole lot more pudding for American workers in February.
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