This Tax Day, Nevada’s Billionaires Get Even Richer as Congress Proposes Taking Away Healthcare and Food Aid From Millions

NEVADA — This Tax Day, as last-minute filers send in their returns, federal lawmakers in Congress are working to advance a bill that will make the top 1% wealthiest households in Nevada even richer by extending the Trump tax law that has already lavished huge tax breaks on the super-wealthy. Since the Trump-GOP tax law was enacted in 2017, the collective fortune of Nevada’s 19 billionaires has grown by $53 billion, or 83%, according to a new report released today by the Institute for a Progressive Nevada and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF).

“While hard-working Nevadans are paying their fair share of taxes with every paycheck, the simple truth is that the state's wealthiest are not”, said Shelbie Swartz, Executive Director of the Institute for a Progressive Nevada. “For the 1 percent, taxes on the vast majority of their wealth – chiefly their stock portfolios – are outside the reach of the tax code, due in no small part to Trump and the MAGA elite’s 2017 tax law. Now, Trump wants to extend that tax law – and he wants to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to do it. He would rather his rich golf buddies get yet another tax break than make sure hardworking Nevadans have health insurance. In this moment, especially after Trump’s tariffs have threatened to send inflation soaring again, we need to build an economy that rewards hard work, not billionaires.”

Although the law is set to expire in 2025, Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate have both passed budget resolutions that would extend the law in order to continue those tax breaks, potentially permanently. The $5.5 trillion cost of extending the Trump tax law would be paid for in part by slashing Medicaid, ending a key Affordable Care affordability provision, gutting food assistance under SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and making other cuts in vital public services.

Even as hundreds of thousands of people in Nevada who rely on Medicaid and food assistance are threatened with significant cuts in those services to help pay for even more tax cuts for the rich, the report also finds that households with incomes of a million dollars or more—the highest-income residents in the state—have seen their annual income grow by $21 billion, or 115%, from $18 billion to $39 billion, since the enactment of the Trump-GOP tax law.

"This Tax Day, Trump and Musk are doing everything in their power to make our tax system worse for average people while giving tax cuts to billionaires like themselves. Their all-out attacks on the IRS will result in delayed refunds, denied taxpayer service, and a free pass for wealthy tax evaders," said David Kass, ATF's executive director. "The billionaire-backed GOP is determined to slash vital public services like Medicaid and food assistance to fund trillions in tax cuts for economic elites. The astronomical growth in billionaire wealth and million-dollar incomes since the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law reveals its true intent: make millions of Americans suffer so a handful of wealthy elites can further enrich themselves. We will fight Republican efforts to cut health care and food assistance for workers and families to pay for tax cuts for billionaires."

To hide its true cost, the Trump law made most of its provisions temporary, with a scheduled expiration date at the end of 2025. President Trump, the Republican Congress, and their wealthy backers are determined to make those parts of the law permanent, no matter what it costs in terms of reduced services or higher debt.

In the first year of such an extension, the 1% highest-income households in Nevada would get an average $88,000 tax cut, while the bottom 60% would get about $1.50 a day. (This estimate includes Trump’s proposal not to extend the cap on the deduction of state and local taxes.)

To help pay for this top-heavy tax cut, Congressional Republicans are planning to cut public services like healthcare, nutritional assistance, and education aid by trillions of dollars. The GOP-controlled House of Representatives has already passed a budget that would cut $2 trillion in services, including $880 billion from Medicaid, endangering the healthcare of one in four Americans–or some 80 million people–including 756,000 from Nevada.

The Republican budget proposal also eliminates enhanced premium tax credits that help consumers purchase more affordable coverage on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. Over 20 million people are currently enrolled in ACA coverage. Over 90% of enrollees receive tax credits that make the coverage affordable.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that between four and five million fewer people will enroll in coverage if Congress ends the enhanced premium tax credits. Millions more will face tremendously steep premium increases. The average annual premium increase would, depending on congressional district, range from $360 to $1,860, a 41 to 218 percent hike. In Nevada, for instance, the cost of premiums for a couple making $82,000 a year, in which each partner is 60 years old, would increase by $14,100 annually without the enhanced premium tax credits. The budget also calls for $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps families afford groceries at a time of high food prices. Over the last five years, the price of common food items like milk, eggs, meat and vegetables has increased by double digits. Nearly 43 million Americans rely on SNAP to stave off hunger, including almost 500,000 from Nevada.

Taking healthcare coverage and food from millions of people and hiking healthcare costs for millions more will not only have dire consequences for families, but for local economies and communities as well. Medicaid is the leading source of federal funding for states. While the program is jointly funded by states and the federal government, over two-thirds of the funding comes from the federal government. In the case of SNAP, all the funding is federal. In addition to the direct loss of services, states would lose the economic benefits from the federal infusion of funding that includes multiplier effects like increased employment.

The proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would reach $1.1 trillion over a decade, including a $95 billion loss of federal funding in 2026 alone. Nationally, these cuts would cost over a million jobs nationwide in health care, food-related industries, and other sectors. Failure to extend the ACA premium tax credits would cut an additional 286,000 jobs in 2026 alone. In addition to receiving $756 million less in federal funding, Nevada would lose 9,200 jobs as well as $58.8 million in state revenue and suffer a $1.6 billion loss in state economic output.

State budgets, already reeling from lower-than-expected revenue, have no way to make up for this loss of essential revenue and therefore, may be forced to cut other services, raise local taxes or dramatically increase the number of uninsured people in the state. In Nevada, proposed cuts to Medicaid alone could threaten up to $1.9 billion over the next two-year budget cycle, potentially kicking more than 300,000 Nevadans off their health insurance.

At least two national studies show that proposed Republican fiscal policies would actually create higher costs for all but the highest-income Americans, who would instead reap huge savings. The Yale Budget Lab found that if enacted the tax-and-service cuts in the House budget would cost families earning less than $38,065 over $750 next year. Families earning less than $13,840 would be hurt the most, facing over a thousand dollars of higher costs. Meanwhile the top 0.1%--folks with income over $3.3 million–would save on average $180,000.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at a different collection of Republican policy proposals and found the same kind of result. If one version of the Trump economic agenda were enacted–including extension of the expiring tax cuts; higher tariffs; the exemption of certain types of income from tax; an even lower corporate tax rate; and the repeal of energy tax credits–in 2026 95% of American families would face higher costs, while the top 5% would save money, the top 1% over $36,000.

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About Institute for a Progressive Nevada: Institute for a Progressive Nevada, through strategic communication efforts, educates, empowers, and engages Nevada voters to build a state where everyone has a fair opportunity to succeed.