July 4 marks one year since the enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and analysts across the tax policy spectrum are taking stock: who received tax relief (and how much), who bore (or will bear) the offsetting costs, and how the law has reshaped the American fiscal state and the trajectory of future reform. This anniversary commentary divides sharply (and largely predictably) over the OBBBA’s merits, with much turning on broader or narrower constructions of the OBBBA’s distributional effects—essentially, the baselines from which change is measured. To a significant extent, this debate revisits familiar ground, while also revealing the shifting and contingent terrain of tax reform heading into future political cycles.
Below the fold, are recent anniversary assessments—including the White House’s press release—that capture this divide.
The White House, Press Release, One Year Later: President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cuts Are Delivering for American Workers (July 3, 2026):
The success of President Trump’s widely popular tax breaks, like No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, No Tax on Social Security and Made in America Car-Loan deductions, is undeniable. A look at the first-year’s results shows that nearly 70% of filers who received a tax cut earned less than $100,000.
Amina Khalique & Natasha Murphy, On the First Anniversary of the OBBBA, Millions of Americans Have Been Left Behind, Center for American Progress (June 25, 2026):
In its first year, the OBBBA has raised the incomes of the wealthiest households to the detriment of low-income Americans, while driving up the number of uninsured Americans and households without SNAP. Families, communities, and health care systems nationwide will be experiencing the harms of these policies for years to come.
Rachel Loren, Trump Keeps Promise of Across-the-Board Tax Cuts: 97% of Tax Filers Received a Tax Cut, Americans for Tax Reform (June 29, 2026):
Treasury data shows that 96% of the filers who received a tax cut earned less than $200,000 annually. . . .
Americans received an average tax refund of nearly $3,300 this filing season, an increase of more than 11 percent compared to the previous year.
Lily Roberts, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, One Year Later: Parsing the Evidence on the Law’s Consequences So Far, Washington Center for Equitable Growth (June 30, 2026):
One year after its passage, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is making life less affordable for millions of U.S. households. Hungry families have less access to food support, and ACA marketplace insurance became more expensive—sometimes prohibitively so. Further impending changes to Medicaid and nutrition assistance will have significant economic consequences for individuals, communities, and states.
Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, 2025 Trump Tax Law One Year In: Who Won, Who Lost, and What Comes Next (June 26, 2026):
ITEP has published national and state-by-state estimates showing that the 2025 Trump tax law overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans and corporations, while doing far less for working- and middle-class families than its supporters claimed.
Andrew Lautz, One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tax Provisions Explorer, Bipartisan Policy Center (June 30, 2026):
To mark the one-year anniversary of OBBBA, this interactive dashboard summarizes the budgetary effects of 60 tax provisions in the law, along with summaries for each of those provisions.
Nick Johnson, A Year Later, Many States Have Decided Not to Double Down on Trump’s Tax Cuts, Inst. Tax’n & Econ. Pol’y (June 25, 2026):
As of late June, only 10 states—a quarter of the states with personal income taxes—have decided to allow the tipped income deduction for tax year 2026, and just nine are allowing the deduction for overtime [and seven allow the deduction for vehicle loan interest].
Related TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Tax Notes: Check, Please: Workers React to ‘No Tax on Tips’ One Year In (July 3, 2026)
- Borwegen & Mehrotra: The Beginnings of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in Historical Perspective (Mar. 18, 2026)
- Gale et al.: One Big Beautiful Bill? A Preliminary Assessment (May 16, 2026)
- The Promise and Peril of the OBBBA’s Populist Tax Breaks (Apr. 4, 2026)
- States Continue to Decouple from OBBBA (Jan. 12, 2026)
- Tax Foundation: Fact Checking the Trump Administration (Nov. 22, 2025)
- Kamin: Tax Reform After The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Nov. 7, 2025)
