Trump Tax Break to Help Poor Communities Not Surprisingly is a Bonanza for the Rich

The gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it's been in the past 50 years. 

This is caused by policies put into place by Republican legislatures at the state and federal levels.   They pass tax policies that favor businesses and higher-income families.

U.S. income inequality was "significantly higher" in 2018 than in 2017, ... despite the median U.S. income hitting a new record in 2018, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau....in its latest American Community Survey report.

Inequality has steadily climbed over the past 5 decades despite the country experiencing the longest period of economic expansion in its history.

Within the 2017 tax scam was a major program to create Opportunity Zones to promote investment where poverty persists.  If that's what is actually accomplished, that'd be nice. 

The stated goal of the tax benefit — tucked into the Republicans’ 2017 tax-cut legislation — was to coax investors to pump cash into poor neighborhoods, known as opportunity zones, leading to new housing, businesses and jobs.

The initiative allows people to sell stocks or other investments and delay capital gains taxes for years — as long as they plow the proceeds into projects in federally certified opportunity zones. Any profits from those projects can avoid federal taxes altogether.

There is no honest, intelligent person in the world who thought it would work out this way.

Trump has portrayed America’s cities as wastelands, ravaged by crime and homelessness, infested by rats.  But the Trump administration’s signature plan to lift them — a multibillion-dollar tax break that is supposed to help low-income areas — has fueled a wave of developments financed by and built for the wealthiest Americans.

Instead, billions of untaxed investment profits are beginning to pour into high-end apartment buildings and hotels, storage facilities that employ only a handful of workers, and student housing in bustling college towns, among other projects.

Many of the projects that will enjoy special tax status were underway long before the opportunity-zone provision was enacted. Financial institutions are boasting about the tax savings that await those who invest in real estate in affluent neighborhoods.

All of Trump's buddies and major Republican donors are getting in on the Opportunity Zone scam.

Among the early beneficiaries of the tax incentive are billionaire financiers like Leon Cooperman and business magnates like Sidney Kohl — and Mr. Trump’s family members and advisers.

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; Richard LeFrak, a New York real estate titan who is close to the president; Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House aide who recently had a falling out with Mr. Trump; and the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, all are looking to profit from what is shaping up to be a once-in-a-generation bonanza for elite investors.

"Perhaps 95 percent of this is doing no good for people we care about."

Shocker.

Sources: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/business/tax-opportunity-zones.html

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764654623/u-s-income-inequality-worsens-widening-to-a-new-gap