Eric Trump, who continues to engage himself in national politics while helping run the Trump Organization, was interviewed by Fox News’ Maria Batiromo Sunday to talk about his father’s accomplishments during the first year of the Trump presidency. When it came to discussing the Republican tax plan, however, he made clear he either has no understanding about how it works or was willing to directly lie about it.

After touting the president’s economic successes, which are really just the result of policies implemented by the Obama administration, Eric Trump pivoted to tax reform. Despite overwhelming analysis from non-partisan tax organizations that indicate the GOP tax plan overwhelmingly benefits wealthy Americans like him, Trump dismissed that “Democratic talking point” as “garbage” and even suggested his own taxes would be higher as a result.

Batiromo goes on to ask Trump, “So you don’t mind individually paying a higher tax yourself because it means a 2 percent corporate tax rate is going to have an impact on the economy move us up in terms of growth?”



What Batiromo fails to mention, however, is this plan will directly benefit wealthy heirs like Eric Trump.

Under the GOP tax framework, owners of “pass-through entities” would be able to pay a tax rate of 25 percent, instead of at their own individual rate. Republicans are selling this as a “small business tax cut” but small business owners already pay a rate of 25 percent or lower on their share of profits. This leaves room for owners of large pass-through businesses like hedge funds or one of the over five hundred pass-throughs that are owned by the Trump Organization (run by Eric Trump along with Donald Trump Jr.) to re-characterize their personal income as profit and pay a tax rate of 25 percent instead of 39.6 or 35 percent.

The Trump Organization is comprised of 500+ passthrough entities. The Kushner Companies are also structured as LLCs. 5/ pic.twitter.com/yrVIsgGB7S — Seth Hanlon (@SethHanlon) November 5, 2017

All told, analysis from the Center For American Progress (CAP) estimates that President Trump could get an annual tax cut worth $23 million. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed at CAP.) White House advisers like Jared Kushner could see a cut of up to $17 million.


The GOP plan also eliminates the estate tax, a tax levied on estates worth over $5.5 million dollars for individuals and $11.5 million for couples. This tax effects a particularly small amount of people, roughly the wealthiest 1 out of 500 estates, yet repealing it would give President Donald Trump’s heirs a tax windfall of roughly $1 billion dollars.

And yet Eric Trump believes he will end up paying higher taxes.

According to analysis of tax bill from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the people who will actually be paying more in taxes are those making less than $75,000 a year.