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How Donald Trump's Tax Plan Might Affect Single Parent Households

by Laura Hankin

Donald Trump recently unveiled his new and "improved" tax plan and, despite all the talk about how it will be the greatest and most tremendous plan for everyone, it still benefits the wealthy far more than anybody else. But there's one group that would be hit particularly hard if the Trump tax plan becomes law — single parents. According to a report on ThinkProgress, the plan could increase taxes for single parents by more than $1,000. Hey, it's not like single parents have a lot to deal with already, right?

The plan would affect single parents adversely through three big proposed changes. First of all, Trump wants to get rid of the "head of household" filing status, which single parents can now claim and use to lower the amount of their income subject to taxes. Under Trump's plan, they would have to file as, simply, "single," which makes their deduction much smaller.

Trump's plan also proposes getting rid of personal exemptions, which lower the amount of taxable income a certain amount for each member of the household. Although Trump proposes a child care deduction which could help fill the void created by taking away these personal exemptions, the deduction only applies to children under the age of 13, so any single parents out there whose kids just became teenagers are on their own. (Right around the time their kids are turning into hormonal jerks who hate them, too. That seems unfair!)

Finally, income at the lowest end of the spectrum is currently taxed at 10 percent. However, Trump's plan would raise that rate to 12 percent.

So how does that all add up? When Harry Stein, the Director of Fiscal Policy at the Center for American Progress, ran the numbers on a single mother with two teenaged children making $34,000 a year, he found that her tax bill would go from $1,255 to $2,280.

But sometimes we all have to make sacrifices, right? Surely if single parents making not nearly enough money a year would see increases in their taxes, the wealthy will also have to pay a little more.

Oh wait. CNBC reports that, under Trump's plan,

The top individual income tax rate would fall from the current 39.6 percent to 33 percent, and the corporate tax rate would drop from 35 percent to 15 percent.

So, while struggling single parents had to pay more, Trump and people like him would get tons of money back.

After all, there are so many 6-foot-tall portraits of themselves that wealthy people would like to acquire, and not all of them can be bought with charity money!