Whose Tax Plan Were We Really Under During Biden’s Presidency?

Let’s talk about something that came up constantly during President Biden’s time in office: taxes. More specifically, the widespread complaint among many voters that they were “suffering under Biden’s tax plan” or “being crushed by Kamala Harris’ taxes.”

There’s just one problem with that narrative. It wasn’t true.

The Tax Reality Nobody Talked About

From January 2018 through December 2025, every American filing taxes did so under the same tax code: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). President Trump signed this legislation into law on December 22, 2017.¹ This means the entire Biden presidency operated under Trump’s tax framework, not Biden’s.

Think about that for a moment. When voters complained about their tax burden during Biden’s term, they were actually experiencing the tax policy Trump championed and signed. Yet somehow, this fundamental fact got lost in the political noise.

What the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Actually Did

The TCJA represented the most comprehensive tax overhaul in decades.² It made sweeping changes that touched nearly every American taxpayer.

The law reduced individual income tax rates across most brackets.³ The top rate dropped from 39.6% to 37%. However, it also eliminated personal exemptions (previously $4,050 per person) while nearly doubling the standard deduction to $24,000 for married couples.³

Additionally, the TCJA increased the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child.³ It capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000, which particularly affected taxpayers in high-tax states.³ The law also created a 20% deduction for qualified pass-through business income.³

Importantly, corporate tax changes were made permanent, with the rate dropping from 35% to 21%.³ But most individual provisions were set to expire after 2025.⁴

Why Working-Class Voters Felt the Pinch

So if the TCJA cut taxes for most people, why did so many Americans feel financially squeezed during the Biden years? Several factors contributed to this disconnect.

First, while many taxpayers received cuts, the structure of those cuts varied significantly. Research from the Tax Policy Center found that in 2018, the bottom 80% of taxpayers received about 35% of the tax benefits, while the top 20% received roughly 65%.⁵

Second, many Americans don’t directly see their tax cuts. If your withholding adjusted automatically, your paycheck increased by a relatively small amount each period. This gradual change often goes unnoticed compared to, say, a big refund check.

Furthermore, inflation during 2021-2023 eroded purchasing power faster than most tax savings could compensate.⁶ Even if you were paying less in taxes, if your groceries cost 20% more and your rent increased substantially, you felt poorer despite the tax cut.

The TCJA also used chained CPI for adjusting tax brackets, which means brackets increase more slowly than under the previous method.³ This quietly pushes more people into higher brackets over time—a stealth tax increase built into the law.

The Attribution Problem

Here’s where politics and perception diverged from reality. President Biden proposed various tax changes throughout his presidency, but none became law in a way that fundamentally altered the TCJA framework for most Americans.

Biden did sign the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included tax provisions, but these primarily affected corporations and high-income earners through measures like a 15% corporate minimum tax and enhanced IRS enforcement.⁷ The average working-class taxpayer saw no direct tax increase from this legislation.

Yet conservative media and political messaging successfully convinced many Americans they were paying “Biden’s taxes” or would suffer under “Kamala Harris’s tax plan.” This was effective politics but inaccurate economics.

The tax code Americans actually lived under from 2018 through 2025 was designed, passed, and signed by Republicans during Trump’s first term. Every tax provision you experienced during Biden’s presidency—good or bad—originated from that 2017 legislation.

What This Means Going Forward

In 2025, a critical moment arrived for tax policy. Most individual provisions of the TCJA were scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025.⁸ Without congressional action, tax rates would have reverted to pre-2017 levels, the standard deduction would have dropped significantly, and the child tax credit would have fallen back to $1,000.⁸

However, Congress acted. In July 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended most TCJA provisions indefinitely.⁹ The legislation passed with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.⁹

This extension increases the child tax credit to $2,200 (from $2,000) with annual inflation adjustments.¹⁰ It raises the estate tax exemption to $15 million beginning in 2026.¹⁰ It makes the 20% small business deduction permanent for pass-through entities.¹⁰ It also includes provisions for tax-free tip income and overtime pay.¹⁰

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the expiring provisions would add $4.6 trillion to deficits over 10 years.¹¹ Economic analyses suggest the extensions will boost GDP modestly while primarily benefiting higher-income households.¹²

Why Biden Couldn’t Simply Replace Trump’s Tax Plan

Some might ask: if Biden thought the TCJA was problematic, why didn’t he pass his own tax plan? This is a fair question that deserves a straightforward answer.

First, the mathematics of Congress matter. During Biden’s presidency, Democrats held razor-thin majorities—the Senate was split 50-50 (with Vice President Harris as the tiebreaker) from 2021-2022, and Republicans controlled the House from 2023-2024.¹³ Passing comprehensive tax reform requires either bipartisan support or unified party control with room for dissent. Biden had neither.

Moreover, even when Democrats controlled both chambers, not all Democratic senators supported significant tax increases. Moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema repeatedly signaled opposition to major tax overhauls.¹⁴ With no votes to spare, comprehensive tax reform was mathematically impossible.

Biden did propose tax changes in every budget he submitted. His proposals included raising the corporate rate to 28%, increasing the top individual rate to 39.6%, and taxing capital gains as ordinary income for high earners.¹⁵ These proposals went nowhere in Congress. That’s not because Biden didn’t try—it’s because he didn’t have the votes.

Additionally, legislative priorities compete for limited time and political capital. The Biden administration focused its energy on passing the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Each of these faced enormous obstacles. Attempting comprehensive tax reform on top of these efforts would likely have failed while potentially derailing other priorities.

It’s also worth noting that completely overhauling a major tax law within four years is extraordinarily rare. The 1986 tax reform took years of bipartisan negotiation.¹⁶ The TCJA itself benefited from full Republican control of government and still barely passed. Expecting Biden to undo Trump’s signature legislative achievement with minimal congressional support isn’t realistic—it’s fantasy.

The tax code Americans actually lived under from 2018 through 2025 was designed, passed, and signed by Republicans during Trump’s first term. Every tax provision you experienced during Biden’s presidency—good or bad—originated from that 2017 legislation. Biden’s inability to change it reflected political reality, not lack of effort or concern.

The Lesson in All This

The story of tax policy during the Biden years illustrates how easily political messaging can override factual reality. Millions of Americans genuinely believed they were paying taxes under a Democratic policy framework when they were actually living under Republican tax law.

This matters beyond partisan politics. It matters because understanding who designed the tax code you’re living under is essential to evaluating its effects honestly. It matters because if we can’t agree on basic facts about whose policies we’re experiencing, we can’t have productive conversations about whether those policies are working.

The TCJA had real effects on real people. Some provisions helped working families—the increased standard deduction and child tax credit provided genuine relief to many. Other provisions, like the SALT cap and the elimination of various deductions, hurt others. The law’s benefits flowed disproportionately to high-income households and corporations.

Whether you think those tradeoffs were worthwhile is a legitimate subject for debate. But that debate needs to start with acknowledging whose policy we were actually debating. From 2018 through 2025, that was Trump’s tax plan, not Biden’s or Harris’s.

Now, with the extension signed into law, Americans will continue living under this tax framework indefinitely. The provisions that shaped your taxes during Biden’s presidency will continue shaping them during Trump’s second term. The difference is that now, the attribution matches the reality.

Moving forward, Americans have the opportunity to evaluate tax policy based on its actual effects rather than political labels. We can ask: Do these provisions support working families? Do they encourage economic growth? Do they distribute the tax burden fairly? Are the deficit impacts sustainable?

These are the questions that matter. And answering them requires starting with the facts—including the fact that the tax plan Americans experienced during the Biden years was Trump’s plan all along.