State Billionaires Are Worth 83% More Since Enactment of 2017 Tax Law Congress Wants to Extend

For Immediate Release: April 15, 2025

Charlottesville – This Tax Day, as last-minute filers send in their returns, federal lawmakers in Congress are working to advance a bill that will make the top 1% wealthiest households in Virginia even richer by extending the 2017 tax law that has already lavished huge tax breaks on the super-wealthy. Since the tax law was enacted, the collective fortune of Virginia’s 7 billionaires has grown by $30.5 billion, or 83%, according to a new report released today by Virginia Organizing and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF). 

Although the law is set to expire in 2025, majorities in the U.S. House and Senate have both passed budget resolutions that would extend the law in order to continue those tax breaks, potentially permanently. The $5.5 trillion cost of extending the tax law would be paid for in part by slashing Medicaid, ending a key Affordable Care affordability provision, gutting food assistance under SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and making other cuts in vital public services.

Even as millions of people in Virginia who rely on Medicaid and food assistance are threatened with significant cuts in those services to help pay for even more tax cuts for the rich, the report also finds that households with incomes of a million dollars or more—the highest-income residents in the state—have seen their annual income grow by over $26 billion, or 83%, from $31.8 billion to $58.2 billion, since the enactment of the tax law. 

	Net WorthMar 27, 2025($ Millions)	Net WorthDec 30, 2017($ Millions)	7-YearWealth Growth($ Millions)	7-YearWealth Growth(Percent)
All Virginia Billionaires	$67,338	$36,800	$30,538	83.0%
Jacqueline Mars	$40,537	$25,900	$14,637	56.5%
Pamela Mars	$10,139	N/A	N/A	N/A
Daniel D’Aniello	$4,503	$2,900	$1,603	55.3%
Winifred J. Marquart	$4,452	$3,700	$752	20.3%
William Conway Jr	$3,992	$2,900	$1,092	37.6%
Steve Case	$2,363	$1,400	$963	68.8%
Richard Fairbank	$1,352	N/A	N/A	N/A

“Since 2002, Virginia Organizing and our leaders have been fighting for tax reform that raises resources for needed services, and that makes the wealthiest Virginians pay their share.  These proposed budget rules do the opposite,” stated Lily Hungarland, Virginia Organizing State Governing Board Chairperson.

To hide its true cost, the 2017 tax law made most of its provisions temporary, with a scheduled expiration date at the end of 2025. Congress is determined to make those parts of the law permanent, no matter what it costs in terms of reduced services or higher debt. 

In the first year of such an extension, the 1% highest-income households in Virginia would get an average $76,500 tax cut, while the bottom 60% would get less than $2 a day on average. (This estimate includes Trump’s proposal not to extend the cap on the deduction of state and local taxes.)

To help pay for this top-heavy tax cut, Congress is planning to cut public services like health care, nutritional assistance, and education aid by trillions of dollars. The House of Representatives has already passed a budget that would cut $2 trillion in services, including $880 billion from Medicaid, endangering the health care of one in four Americans–or some 80 million people–including 1.8 million from Virginia. 

The budget proposal also eliminates enhanced premium tax credits that help consumers purchase more affordable coverage on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. Over 20 million people are currently enrolled in ACA coverage. Over 90% of enrollees receive tax credits that make the coverage affordable. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that between four and five million fewer people will enroll in coverage if Congress ends the enhanced premium tax credits. Millions more will face tremendously steep premium increases. The average annual premium increase would, depending on congressional district, range from $360 to $1,860, a 41 to 218 percent hike. In Virginia, for instance, the cost of premiums for a couple making $82,000 a year in which each partner is 60 years old would increase by $11,990 annually without the enhanced premium tax credits. 

The budget also calls for $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps families afford groceries at a time of high food prices. Over the last five years, the price of common food items like milk, eggs, meat and vegetables have increased by double digits. Nearly 43 million Americans rely on SNAP to stave off hunger, including almost 832,000 Virginians. 

“I would not have been in a position to identify the liver disease that I had that then led to liver cancer without Medicaid. I would have not been able to afford the transplant or any of the after care including medications that I will be on for the rest of my life,” said Tiffany Hunter of Norton, Virginia.

Taking healthcare coverage and food from millions of people and hiking healthcare costs for millions more will not only have dire consequences for families, but for local economies and communities as well. Medicaid is the leading source of federal funding for states. While the program is jointly funded by states and the federal government, over two-thirds of the funding comes from the federal government. In the case of SNAP, all the funding is federal. In addition to the direct loss of services, states would lose the economic benefits from the federal infusion of funding that includes multiplier effects like increased employment.

The proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would reach $1.1 trillion over a decade, including a $95 billion loss of federal funding in 2026 alone. Nationally, these cuts would cost over a million jobs nationwide in health care, food-related industries, and other sectors. Failure to extend the ACA premium tax credits would cut an additional 286,000 jobs in 2026 alone. In addition to receiving $1.811 billion less in federal funding, Virginia would lose 21,600 jobs as well as $167.6 million in state revenue and suffer a $3.778 billion loss in state economic output.

State budgets, already reeling from lower-than-expected revenue, have no way to make up for this loss of essential revenue and therefore, may be forced to cut other services, raise local taxes or dramatically increase the number of uninsured people in the state. While Virginia’s budget has so far remained healthy, Governor Youngkin focused his recent budget amendments on “reducing ongoing spending to recognize General Assembly concerns over potential downside risk to general fund revenues from [what he called] necessary reductions in federal spending.” 

“Noah, my 10 year old, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in September 2023. I am terrified that if Medicaid benefits are dissolved that we will not be able to afford his continuous glucose monitors and insulin, which his life depends on,” said Amanda May of Bland County

At least two national studies show that proposed Congressional fiscal policies would actually create higher costs for all but the highest-income Americans, who would instead reap huge savings. The Yale Budget Lab found that if enacted the tax-and-service cuts in the House budget would cost families earning less than $38,065 over $750 next year. Families earning less than $13,840 would be hurt the most, facing over a thousand dollars of higher costs. Meanwhile the top 0.1%–folks with income over $3.3 million–would save on average $180,000. 

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at a different collection of Congressional policy proposals and found the same kind of result. If one version of the president’s economic agenda were enacted–including extension of the expiring tax cuts; higher tariffs; the exemption of certain types of income from tax; an even lower corporate tax rate; and the repeal of energy tax credits–in 2026 95% of American families would face higher costs, while the top 5% would save money, the top 1% over $36,000.