Ivanka Trump and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin came to New Hampshire on tax day to bury the old tax system and praise the new cuts signed into law by the president.
“We don’t come together to celebrate tax day,” said Trump, who serves as a top adviser to her father. “We’ll still never love Tax Day, but you’ll like it a whole lot better next year.”
As Trump and Mnuchin touted the benefits of the new tax law at a town-hall style event at the Derry Opera House, the White House announced that President Donald Trump – for a second straight year – filed an extension for his taxes, giving him a new deadline of Oct. 15.
That doesn’t mean the president is receiving special treatment over the average American, Mnuchin said.
“Every American taxpayer has the same obligation today. The president is no different,” Mnuchin said. “Today is the day where you owe payment on your taxes. Any American can take advantage, if they want, extending their tax returns.”
Mnuchin and Ivanka Trump sat on stools next to former Republican governor John H. Sununu, who moderated the event. The elder Sununu, once a vocal critic of then-presidential candidate Trump, has become a strong supporter of the president.
Mnuchin and Trump both emphasized that on tax filing day next year, Americans will feel the full benefits from the new law.
“Across the country, you see that the average amount of savings for a family of four is $2,000,” Trump said. “So this is real. It is meaningful.”
Mnuchin emphasized the tax cuts will spur business growth and create new jobs.
“We will have the lowest rate now for small businesses since the 1930s,” he said.
They answered questions that came from the invitation-only audience, which was selected by officials at the White House, the Republican National Committee and the New Hampshire GOP. The crowd consisted mostly of GOP state lawmakers, Republican candidates, local party activists and Trump supporters.
Dover resident and hair salon owner Marga Culp praised the tax cuts.
“This tax cut is a breath of fresh air for me because I can hire more employees,” she said.
Later, Nick Demayo of Sugar Hill asked, “On Tax Day next year are we really going to be able to file our taxes on a post card?”
“Yes Nick, you will be able to,” Mnuchin said.
“How big?” Demayo quickly asked.
“A medium-sized post card,” Mnuchin replied.
Speaking with reporters after the event, the treasury secretary pushed back against a suggestion that the town hall was a campaign event, even if the guest list read more like a fundraiser than a Q&A with government leaders.
“This is not a campaign event,” he said. “I didn’t invite people, so I can’t comment on who was invited or who wasn’t invited.”
Currently, most polls indicate that the law, the only major domestic legislative achievement to date for the president and the Republicans who control Congress, remains unpopular with many Americans.
Mnuchin said he’s not frustrated by that public opinion.
“People will realize when that helps them when they pay their taxes,” he said. “There’s a large number of people who already have the benefits of that from withholding taxes.”
Earlier, during the town hall, Ivanka Trump touted the measure’s doubling of the child tax credit to help families deal with the cost of child care and early childhood education. She also cited a Medicare credit “that was created for those taking care of adult dependents, which so many of us are.”
And she emphasized the doubling of the standard deduction.
“The things that were removed were those things that benefited the special interests and had accumulated over multiple decades,” she said. “The things that stayed were those things that would propel businesses forward and help the hard-working American families.”
Trump highlighted that the simplification of the tax code will benefit average Americans.
“It is really going to disproportionately help those who don’t have the resources to hire the accounting firms and the lawyers,” she said.
Democrats remain critical of the tax law. The Democratic National Committee highlighted a Congressional Budget Office analysis released last week that estimated the law will add more than $1.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
Mnuchin predicted that the tax cuts will spur 3 percent growth, and a lot sooner than projected.
“The difference between 2 percent and 3 percent raises trillions of dollars for the government that will pay for these tax cuts and put money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans,” he said.
The New Hampshire Democratic Party organized a small protest across the street from the Opera House. National and state Democrats have long charged that the Trump tax cuts primarily benefit large corporations and the wealthy.
On the eve of the town hall, a report by the progressive groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Health Care for America Now highlighted that “the richest 1 percent of New Hampshire taxpayers – people with an average income of at least $1,720,400 – will receive 23 percent of the state’s total tax cut.”
The report also pointed out that “the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers – people with income less than $83,420 – will get just 15 percent of the tax cuts.”
Outside the criticisms of the Republican tax cuts or the fanfare of Trump and Mnuchin’s trip to New Hampshire, Americans observing the true spirit of Tax Day – paying taxes at the last minute – faced their own set of problems.
It turned out the online payment service for the IRS, a bureau of the Treasury, wasn’t operating Tuesday, as Secretary Mnuchin was in Derry for the filing deadline.
“If you’re going on the direct pay system, to pay your taxes today, that system is down, and we expect it to go up shortly and we’ll make sure that taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up,” Mnuchin said.