Donald Trump’s cynical new claim that he would exempt overtime from taxes is a sham. Trump has a long anti-overtime record. While president, he stripped overtime protections from millions by refusing to defend the Obama-era overtime rule in court and instead publishing his own, much weaker rule. Further, Project 2025, which provides a roadmap for what Trump would do if elected president, has a deeply anti-overtime agenda that would strip overtime protections from at least 8 million workers.
What’s more, Trump’s policy would be easily gamed, allowing a huge share of the benefits to go to highly paid workers and their employers. Remember—any hourly, W-2 worker is eligible for overtime, no matter how much they earn. To allow their salaried, overtime-exempt workers to get the tax cut, employers could easily switch them to hourly. They would set the hourly wage so that, with overtime, they are paying no more than they paid before—in fact, highly paid workers would be willing to accept a somewhat lower hourly wage than the “breakeven” level in order to get the tax break. It is not unreasonable to imagine that this policy would lead to a world where corporate CEOs earn $4,000 an hour plus $6 million in overtime.
Clearly, Trump’s new playbook is to claim he won’t tax the earnings of the very groups of workers whose earnings he already has a clear record of undermining. Don’t buy this cynical ploy.