President Trump and the Republicans in Congress spent a year telling you they cut your taxes. A new report did the math on everything else they did, too. For almost everyone, the bill is bigger than the tax cut.
On October 8, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) published an analysis of three big things the second Trump administration has done to your wallet:
- The new tax cuts in Trump's budget bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- The end of the health insurance tax credits that held down premiums for people who buy their own coverage.
- The price increases caused by tariffs, the Iran war and the immigration crackdown.
Add those up, and the report finds that the typical American in every income group pays more in 2026. Every group except one: the richest 1%.
What it costs you
ITEP splits the country into five equal slices by income, then looks separately at the very top. Here is what the report found, as USA TODAY laid it out:
- The poorest 20% pay about $750 more this year.
- The middle 20%, the typical American, pay about $1,700 more.
- Every other group below the top 1% pays at least $1,000 more.
- The richest 1% pay $12,560 less.
Those numbers hit hardest at the bottom. ITEP puts the middle group's extra cost at 2.7% of their income, and the poorest group's at 5.7%. A family scraping by loses more than twice as big a share of what it earns as a family in the middle.
How the typical American ends up $1,700 behind
For someone in the middle of the income ladder, here is how the report's math works:
- The new tax cuts in Trump's budget bill save them about $380 this year.
- Losing the health insurance tax credits costs them about $230.
- Higher prices from Trump's policies cost them about $1,850.
So the tax cut Republicans keep advertising is real. It's just about a fifth the size of the price hikes that came with it. The middle-income family gets $380 back with one hand and hands over $2,080 with the other.
"No matter how much the Trump administration touts the tax cuts that they've enacted, they can't get around the fact that they've caused increased costs that more than offset those tax cuts by a lot for most people, except for the rich," Steve Wamhoff, ITEP's federal tax policy director, told USA TODAY.
Why the richest 1% come out ahead
The top 1% pay higher prices too. The report says Trump's price-raising policies cost them about $15,990 this year.
But their new tax cuts are so big they swamp it. ITEP says the budget bill's new tax breaks save the top 1% about $28,550 in 2026. That leaves them $12,560 ahead, while everyone below them falls behind.
That isn't just one think tank's finding. USA TODAY notes that the Congressional Budget Office, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and others have also found that the budget bill's tax cuts favor high-income households.
Where the higher prices come from
The biggest new cost for most Americans isn't taxes at all. It's prices.
To measure it, ITEP compared how fast prices actually rose in Trump's second term with what the Congressional Budget Office expected right before he took office. The gap is what the report charges to his policies. It names three of them:
- Tariffs. The report calls them what they are, taxes on imports, and says that "Even U.S. corporations admit Americans are paying them." We've written about how Trump keeps raising tariffs with help from Republicans in Congress, and about how, after the Supreme Court struck down the ones he imposed under an emergency law, the refunds went to big companies instead of the shoppers who actually paid.
- The Iran war. The report cites fuel cost increases of "over $100 billion" from the war so far. Moody's chief economist has put the war's cost at about $1,200 per household in its first six months, and Congress has never voted to authorize it.
- The immigration crackdown. Losing foreign-born workers, the report says, has pushed up prices for food, housing and other goods and services.
Even economists who usually side with tax cutters agree on the tariffs. "Tariffs are tax increases on Americans," Adam Michel of the libertarian Cato Institute told USA TODAY.
The health insurance hit
The enhanced tax credits that lowered premiums for people buying their own health insurance ran out at the end of 2025. Congress could have extended them, and didn't. ITEP counts that as a Trump policy choice, and puts its cost at about $230 this year for the average middle-income American.
For the people who actually lost the credits, the hit is much bigger than that average. The number of people enrolled and paying for coverage fell by 2.6 million in a single year, and what enrollees paid rose an average of 58%.
Who voted for this
None of this happened by accident, and the president didn't do it alone.
The budget bill that gave the top 1% their $28,550 tax cut passed the House 218 to 214 on July 3, 2025. Every vote for it came from a Republican. Not one Democrat voted yes.
In the Senate it was even closer. The bill tied 50 to 50, and Vice President JD Vance broke the tie. All 50 votes for it were Republicans.
That is the same Congress that let the health insurance tax credits expire.
What the White House says
The White House didn't dispute the numbers so much as change the subject. Spokesman Matthew Middleton told USA TODAY that Trump's agenda "has stopped Biden's inflation crisis, driven economic growth, and created private-sector jobs," then pivoted to attacking Democrats.
Some economists who aren't on ITEP's side push back on how the report keeps score. Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out that the budget bill also extended Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which were set to expire. Count those as savings, and most Americans got a bigger tax cut. ITEP's answer is that people don't feel a tax break they've had for years. They feel what changed this year, and what changed is that groceries, gas and health insurance cost more.
Even with the extension counted, ITEP's middle-income family saves only about $780 more, for $1,160 in total tax cuts. That is still smaller than the $2,080 in price hikes and lost health credits. And as USA TODAY notes, the latest federal inflation report shows prices rising faster than wages.
What the numbers show
Trump's budget bill, the lost health insurance tax credits, and the price hikes from his tariffs, the Iran war and the immigration crackdown will cost the typical middle-income American about $1,700 this year and the poorest Americans about $750, according to ITEP. The richest 1% will come out $12,560 ahead, because the budget bill Republicans passed without a single Democratic vote gives them a $28,550 tax cut.
Source
Trump's policies raised costs for all but the top 1%, report says — Daniel de Visé, USA TODAY, October 18, 2026
