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As workers face slowing wage growth, a worsening cost-of-living crisis, and rising unemployment, the chief executives of top corporate retailers in the United States are reaping huge gains from the tax cuts that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans extended over the summer.
An analysis released Friday by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) estimates that the CEOs of Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, TJX, and Walmart have collectively saved close to $35 million on their individual tax returns in the seven years the Trump tax cuts have been in effect.
Thanks to the Trump-GOP tax law, which took effect in 2018, the companies examined in the analysis paid a tax rate of just 17.5% between 2018 and 2024—roughly half what they paid prior to the law’s enactment.
“While at the same time prices have soared for consumers and retail workers remain stuck in low-wage jobs, big-store CEOs and shareholders have reaped higher profits and lower taxes,” David Kass, ATF’s executive director, said in a statement. “If we want a system that alleviates economic stress on average Americans instead of exacerbating it during the holiday season, we need to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, invest in workers and families with expanded public services.”
Workers at the major retailers haven’t fared nearly as well. ATF noted that “the average worker at the eight stores was paid less than $32,000 in 2024.”
“Amazon—the world’s largest retailer—refuses to even sit down with its employees who have formed a labor union for better pay, benefits, and working conditions,” the group observed. “If Lowe’s had used the nearly $50 billion it spent on stock buybacks over the seven-year period to instead raise employee wages, its workers would have each been paid almost $200,000 more.”
Across the US economy, workers are seeing wage growth stagnate amid elevated and still-rising prices, which are forcing many to skip meals and ration their medications to make ends meet.
The Labor Department said earlier this week that wage growth decelerated to 3.5% year over year—the slowest pace since before the Covid-19pandemic. Unemployment, meanwhile, rose in November to the highest level in four years.
The ATF analysis came days after Trump delivered a lie-filled primetime speech defending his handling of the US economy as his approval ratings tanked, with American voters across party lines increasingly furious over the high costs of housing, groceries, healthcare, and other necessities.
During the speech, Trump vowed that Americans would soon “see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history.”
But the richest people in the country are set to reap disproportionate benefits from the tax cuts. As Bloombergreported earlier this week, “Many filers—particularly those who could most use the financial boost—may soon be disappointed.”
“Wealthy taxpayers in high-tax states like California, New York, and New Jersey are the biggest winners,” the outlet noted.