Donald Trump signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images
When Republicans passed their $1.5 trillion tax cut in December, very few Americans expected to personally benefit from the legislation. Depending on the poll, somewhere between
one-sixth and
one-third of adults anticipated that their own tax bill was about to go down. In reality, far more households probably stood to benefit. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, for instance, estimated that about
80 percent of Americans would get a cut.
Why were so many people confused about what the tax cut meant for them individually? There were lots of theories. Maybe it was the press coverage, which tended to highlight the potential losers from the legislation, and how it would disproportionately benefit the rich. Maybe it was a bad sales job by Republicans, who made the mistake of rolling out early drafts of the bill that would have hiked taxes on more middle-class families than the final version. Maybe the public is just instinctively skeptical about large pieces of legislation rushed through Congress without much debate.