By Louis Jacobson | PolitiFactPublished On 23 Aug 202523 Aug 2025US Vice President JD Vance hit the road on August 21 to promote President Donald Trump’s legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending bill.The law permanently extended tax cuts from a 2017 law Trump signed, which would have expired at the end of 2025 had Congress not reauthorised them. The law also included some new tax cuts, including for tips, overtime and Americans 65 and older.Speaking in Peachtree City near Atlanta, Vance said, “We had the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen.”The tax cuts were significant, but they weren’t the biggest in US history, which was a phrase Trump has often used to inaccurately describe his 2017 tax cut law. The 2025 tax cuts rank either third-biggest since 1980 or tied for seventh, depending on the yardstick.At the same time, many Americans could see relatively modest changes to the taxes they owe starting in 2026, because the 2025 law mostly extended existing tax cuts.The White House did not provide a response before publication.Comparing historical tax cut lawsWe examined the tax revenue decreases from major laws passed since 1980. (On balance, most tax laws prior to 1980 either raised taxes or cut them modestly.)Tax bill dollar amounts tend to rise over time because of inflation, so we looked at tax cuts as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), which evens out the differences over time. And because some early laws have tax cut data available only for the first five or six years of the law’s life, we compared laws by looking at the cumulative tax savings during a law’s first five years in effect. Advertisement We found that the law …
