As part of their pitch to voters, Democrats have repeatedly claimed that the Trump-Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 overwhelmingly benefited “the rich.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed any benefit to the middle class as “crumbs”, while presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that $1.3 trillion of these tax cuts went to the top one-tenth of 1% of wage earners. Biden is telling supporters that one of his first priorities will be to repeal these tax cuts if elected president, even if the economy is still struggling.

However, their claim that the TCJA only benefited the wealthy is not backed up by the evidence. To the contrary, the tax cuts delivered significant tax reductions for middle-class families.

According to IRS statistics of income data analyzed by Americans for Tax Reform, families earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their average tax liability drop by over 13% between 2017 and 2018. By comparison, those with income over $1 million saw a far smaller tax cut averaging just 5.8%.