When Donald Trump took office, he promised he would “make America great again.” One of the ways he said he would achieve this was to bring companies back to the United States by implementing a competitive corporate tax rate.
He made good on his promise when he signed his new tax plan, which dropped the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. It is important to note that prior to this cut, the U.S. had one of the highest corporate tax rates of all developed countries.
These tax cuts have inspired many companies to invest, create jobs, increase wages and give bonuses to their workers. Several Fortune 500 companies have come forth with plans for what they will do with these new lower taxes.
Here is what we can expect in the near future:
- JP Morgan Chase — CEO Jamie Dimon has said they plan on doling out $20 billion towards increasing hourly wages for its employees. They plan on increasing their hourly wage from around $15 to $18. They are looking to bring on more than 4,000 employees to specifically increase lending to small businesses and prospective home-buyers. They aim to boost lending to customers seeking inexpensive housing by 25 percent. They plan on opening up 400 new branches in the US alone. Arguably, the most important aspect of their plan is that they are looking to expand their investments in charitable endeavors by $1.75 billion.
- Apple — The tech giant plans to invest $350 billion over the next five years, will create 20,000 new jobs and open a new campus.
- Bank of America — US workers that make less than $150,000 per year, which is around 150,000 people (more than half of their employees), received a one-time bonus payment of $1,000 last year.
- Wells Fargo set the minimum hourly wage for employees at $15 and will likely dole out roughly $400 million to charitable causes.
- Visa plans to expand the threshold of matchmaking contributions to its employees 401k plans from 6 percent to 10 percent.
- Verizon will provide all employees (that are not in top management) with 50 shares (A current value of over $2,600) per worker. Multiplied by the 155,000 workers who will receive these stocks, this redistribution will carry value of roughly $411 million.
- Comcast — Giving out $1,000 bonuses to over 100,000 workers.
- AT&T — According to AT&T they plan “to invest an additional $1 billion in the US in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T US employees – all union-represented, non-management and front line managers”
- Home Depot gave out $1,000 bonuses to US workers that receive an hourly wage.
- Boeing — The aerospace manufacturer has vowed to increase investments by 300 million and have cited the new tax code as the inspiration behind it.
- FedEx was initially planning on putting $200 million towards increasing wages on October 1st, 2018, but because of the tax breaks, but this date has been pushed forward by six months. Further, they plan on boosting the employee pension plan by $1.5 billion and investing another $1.5 billion over the next three years in their Indianapolis hub.
Many other companies have hinted at making similar moves to respect
