Corporate profits are strong and companies have doled out a trillion dollars to their shareholders through buybacks and dividend payments, but corporate tax receipts have dropped more than projected according to the congressional budget office.
As we expected, individual Americans are paying slightly more in taxes while corporations and shareholders take home the bacon.
From Politico:
The U.S. Treasury saw a 31 percent drop in corporate tax revenues last year, almost twice the decline official budget forecasters had predicted. Receipts were projected to rebound sharply this year, but so far they’ve only continued to fall, down by almost 9 percent or $11 billion. [...]
At the same time, overall taxes paid by individuals under the new tax law are up so far this year by 3 percent, thanks to higher wages and salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Last year tax payments by individuals went up 4 percent.
Tax payments by individuals may be up, but it's not the super-rich who are paying more. The richest of the richest are paying less in taxes than they did before on record buybacks and dividends from corporations that saw a windfall from the GOP's tax cuts. These funds are not taxed the same way individual income is taxed, and more often than not the money is funneled through shell corporations that saw their tax rates fall by as much as 15 percent or more.
Corporate tax revenue was projected to drop by up to 21 percent, not 30 percent.
I think it's reasonable to infer that if revenue is dropping more than expected, the federal deficit will likely climb to a trillion dollars sooner than expected as well.