7 Places Your Taxes Will Go if Trump Wins in 2024
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Nicholas Morine
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The biggest tax legislation Donald Trump passed as president was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which raised the standard deduction, lowered corporate and estate tax rates and increased the child tax credit. Those cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025. But if Trump is re-elected in his 2024 rematch with President Joe Biden, you can expect the cuts to be made permanent — and for Trump to make even bigger changes to the federal tax system.
Among other things, Trump has floated the idea of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of the Interior and certain environmental agencies. This means your taxes would no longer be used to fund those agencies or their programs.
Here are seven places your taxes will (and won’t) go should Trump win in 2024.
Individual Taxes
If Trump wins a second term, one of his first moves will likely involve extending the TCJA. Among the key features of the law was that it lowered tax rates across the board and restructured tax brackets. In addition, the standard deduction was nearly doubled for all filing statuses, which led to fewer taxpayers itemizing deductions and instead opting for the standard deduction.
Business Taxes
Another move Trump is expected to make is to maintain the 21% corporate income tax rate included in the TCJA. As Bloomberg reported, the law cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and mainly benefited corporations and the wealthy.
Estate and Wealth Taxes
If you are subject to estate taxes under a second Trump term, you can expect to keep paying the historically low rate he set in motion during his first term. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only eight of every 10,000 people who died left an estate large enough to trigger the tax as of 2019, the most recent year data are available. Most of the estate tax is paid by estates worth more than $20 million, and in recent years the majority has been paid by estates worth more than $50 million.
Federal Healthcare Plans
Trump has said he hopes to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, Business Insider reported, though he has not publicly unveiled an alternate affordable healthcare plan. Fewer of your tax dollars will likely go to these kinds of programs under a second Trump term, and millions of ACA customers will have to change their healthcare plans.
Defense Spending
Although Trump publicly decries U.S. involvement in foreign wars, you can expect more of your tax dollars to go toward defense spending should he win re-election. During Trump’s first term, Pentagon spending rose to $723 billion from $606 billion — something Forbes called a “substantial after-inflation increase that kept America by far the biggest military spender in the world.” In a second Trump term, defense spending would “likely increase again” at above the rate of inflation.
Higher Education
A second Trump term would likely include taxing large private university endowments to pay for a new institution called “American Academy,” Politico reported. The school would “grant credit” to prospective students for past coursework and use their credentials to apply for jobs with the U.S. government and federal contractors, according to plans shared with Politico. You can also expect Trump to end student loan forgiveness efforts that have been a highlight of the Biden administration, which means your tax dollars will no longer go to expanding those programs.
Immigration
Another cornerstone of the Trump campaign is to seal off the border with Mexico and put a stranglehold on illegal immigration. Though he failed to complete the massive border wall that got underway on his watch, Trump will likely revisit the project should he win re-election and also increase federal spending on battling illegal immigration.
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