Executive Summary: 

• The families of President Trump and his top adviser, Elon Musk, could save billions of dollars in taxes from Republican tax plans. Those plans would cost the American people trillions of dollars in lost public revenue, threatening funding of public services vital to working families like healthcare, education and housing, while widening economic inequality and driving up public debt.
  
• Among the top Republican legislative priorities is extending the expiring parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law. Based on what we know about Trump’s income from past tax returns that have been made public, if just one of those expiring provisions–lower individual tax rates–were instead extended, Trump could save at least $2.7 million over 10 years. Based on public information about Musk’s income and tax history, he could avoid up to $50 million in taxes over a decade just from the lower rates.
  

Since each man’s wealth is far above the amount exempted from the estate tax, their families would save $5.6 million if the Trump law’s weakened form of the tax is extended instead of being allowed to return to a more robust state on schedule. But Republicans don’t just want to hobble the estate tax–they want to eliminate it entirely. If they succeed, the Trump family could avoid about $2 billion in tax, and the Musk clan could avoid $128 billion (based on recent estimates of each man’s net worth.)

Extension of the Expiring Parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP Tax Law: Lowered Rates

The last time Donald Trump was president and Republicans controlled Congress, they enacted a tax law that heavily favored the wealthy and added $2 trillion to the national debt. Most of that law is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. 

One of the law’s components that’s set to go away is a set of lower tax rates on “ordinary income” (this category excludes long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, which are taxed under a different rate system). For high-income people, the most lucrative cut was of the top tax rate from 39.6% to 37%. In 2025, that top rate is only paid on the portion of a couple’s ordinary income that exceeds roughly three-quarters of a million dollars. 

According to data from ProPublica, between 2013 and 2018 Elon Musk enjoyed an average annual taxable income of roughly $179 million, all but one percent of which was ordinary. Assuming he had the same average taxable income in each of the first 10 years of an extension of the Trump law’s lower tax rates (and this may be a conservative assumption, since he’s many times richer now), Musk could save a total of around $50 million in income taxes. 

Based on his tax returns that were finally disclosed to the public after a long legal battle, between 2015 and 2020 Trump received on average roughly $10 million a year in wages, taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and taxable pensions and annuities. These were his “predictable” sources of ordinary income (he also had business income in some years, but in others he had business losses). Just considering those four sources of ordinary income, over the first 10 years of an extension of his lower tax rates Trump could save a total of up to roughly $2.7 million in income taxes. 

Extension of the Expiring Parts of Trump Tax Law: Weakened Estate Tax

Another part of the law that is scheduled to expire in 2026 is the amount of fortune that wealthy families can shield from the estate tax. The estate tax is the only federal curb on economic dynasties and, despite ceaseless propaganda to the contrary, poses no threat to family businesses (p. 11) or farms. 

In 2025, a couple can pass down $28 million without paying any estate tax (the amount rises each year with inflation). That number is scheduled to be cut roughly in half, or to around $14 million, in 2026. The value of an estate above the exemption amount is taxed at 40%. So if the more generous exemption amount is retained instead of being allowed to expire, the Musk and Trump families could each save up to about $5.6 million in estate taxes (40% of the additional $14 million exemption).

Eliminating the Estate Tax 

Conservative politicians have systematically weakened the estate tax over recent years, with their ultimate goal being its complete elimination. Forty-five GOP senators, led by the chamber’s majority leader and its chairman of the Finance Committee, early on in this session of Congress introduced a bill to abolish the tax. 

Abolishing the estate tax altogether would be an absolute bonanza for the families of Trump and Musk and for every other super-wealthy clan. Unlike the effect of maintaining the tax’s higher exemption amount–which saves the family of everyone worth over $28 million the same $5.6 million–how much a family would save from elimination of the tax grows with the family’s wealth. 

If his family was relieved of the duty to pay 40% of his fortune in estate tax,  based on his recent net worth of $330 billion, Musk’s heirs could save up to roughly $132 billion. Similarly, based on a recent estimate of Trump’s net worth, his family could save up to around $2 billion. (At these wealth levels, the estate-tax exemption reduces the amount owed by very little.)

An important note: both the Trump and Musk families have undoubtedly set up elaborate estate-tax-avoidance schemes, as most super-wealthy families do.  Since we do not know what tax-avoidance schemes they have undertaken, we have calculated the maximum amount that would be due if the estate tax were fully repealed. (Needless to say, all the abusive strategies that allow fabulously wealthy families to dodge intergenerations-wealth-transfer taxes should be repealed.)

CONCLUSION

Before enactment of his tax law in 2017, President Trump often claimed that he would not personally benefit from it, nor would any other wealthy people. “This is going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me. This is not good for me…I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that’s OK,” he said in one speech. 

As with so many Trump claims, this one was entirely false. Along with other members of the economic elite, Trump and Musk were the main beneficiaries of the original tax law–and will be the main beneficiaries of extending its expiring provisions. 

Therefore Trump’s demand that Congress permanently extend the expiring parts of his tax law–and Musk’s drastic, haphazard attempts to cut public spending to help pay for those extensions–should be viewed for what they are: not a pursuit of desirable public policy, but an attempt to further line their own pockets.