Brit Hume Reports What Percentage Of US Households Don’t Pay Federal Income Tax

On Fox News Wednesday, Brit Hume shared the percentage of American households that do not pay federal income tax.

The Senate approved President Donald Trump’s landmark bill early Tuesday morning by a 51-50 vote, with Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine opposing it after a marathon 24-hour session. During an appearance on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Hume discussed the income tax cut and income tax cuts benefit.

“This is an income tax cut, and income tax cuts benefit the people who pay income taxes. About 40% of the households in the United States today do not pay any federal income tax,” Hume said.

While these households still contribute through other means, such as through Social Security taxes and local taxes, they do not bear the burden of federal income taxes.

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“Now they pay other taxes, Social Security taxes, local taxes, property taxes and so on, but they don’t pay any federal income tax. It’s very hard to design a tax cut that benefits people who don’t pay taxes,” Hume said. “The president has tried with the no taxes on tips and no taxes on overtime and so on, but it is simply a fact of life that tax cuts benefit taxpayers.”

Hume said Republican tax cuts typically focus on income tax reductions, which benefit those who actually contribute to the federal tax system. On the other side of the debate, critics say that the latest tax cuts largely ignore the issue of government spending.

“This is something that Democrats have had a wonderful time through the years using to accuse the Republicans of trying to help the rich and screw the poor,” Hume said. “On the other side of the equation is this. This bill does not do really a great deal about government spending. There are two reasons for that. One is that in a reconciliation bill, which is what this bill is, you cannot attack discretionary spending.”

Hume said that the only aspect of government spending that can be addressed in a reconciliation bill is entitlement spending.

“That is to say most of the different programs in the government. The only thing you can attack, the only thing you can is entitlement spending and the Republicans have tried to do that with some reduction in some of this Medicaid spending,” Hume said. “Now the Democrats are saying you are going to throw people out of their healthcare and there are going to be people dying because of this and so on.”

Hume said that the bill aims to restrict or deny benefits to those ineligible, such as illegal immigrants. He also cited concerns about people abusing the program and the belief that many people receive benefits to which they are not legally entitled. (RELATED: ‘No Great Big Grand Final Bargain’: Brit Hume Says Deal With China Still ‘Has A Long Way To Go’)

“The fact is that what this bill tries to do is to restrict benefits or deny them to people who are not eligible for them, such as illegal immigrants, such as people who, for other reasons, are not eligible because the belief is that there has been a lot of abuse of this program and a lot of people are getting benefits who are not legally entitled to them,” Hume said. “So those are just a couple of key facts about the bill to understand.”

The Tax Policy Center reports that about 40% of U.S. households, or roughly 76 million tax units, will owe no federal income tax in 2025. Most of these households earn less than $75,000 annually, with many benefiting from refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, which can reduce tax liability to below zero.

The Senate made several key changes to the “Big, Beautiful bill,” including reducing the rural hospital fund to $25 billion and removing a controversial excise tax from green energy provisions. The bill also introduced new tax credits for nonprofit contributions to schools, added Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s REIT measure, and officially removed the original title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” given by Trump.

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