, Columnist
Five Charts That Show How Companies Are Spending Their Tax Savings
About 60 percent of the gains are going to shareholders, compared with 15 percent for employees.
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President Donald Trump and Republicans sold their $1.5 trillion tax cut as a boon for workers, but it's becoming clear just two months after the bill passed that the truly big winners will be corporations and their shareholders, but perhaps not as big as people have been proclaiming recently.
The latest evidence is buybacks, which are on track to have their best quarter ever. Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, says much of those buybacks are from overseas cash coming back into the U.S. He's right, though Republicans argued that would boost wages and investment as well. Still, even stripping away the repatriated cash and looking just at increases in buybacks, investors and companies are still coming out ahead.