Bank of America Celebrates Giant Tax Cut by Raising Fees on Poor People
By Bess Levin
January 23, 2018 7:21 pm
The bank stands to save an extra $3 billion next year, but let’s not get carried away.
Like its corporate brethren, Bank of America received an early Christmas present when
Donald Trump signed his tax “reform” bill into law, which brought much-needed relief to average, middle-class families by chopping the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. Prior to the passage of what might as well be called the “Your Fingers Are Going to Cramp Counting All This Money” Act, companies, we were told, were absolutely
suffocating under the murderously high corporate rate. (Never mind the fact that in July, U.S. corporations recorded profit growth
not seen in six years, or that between the summer of 2016 and 2017, one bank had its most profitable year
in the history of banking—such details are not germane to this story.) Finally given reprieve from such beastly treatment, companies are expected to save, in some cases, billions of dollars a year—Bank of America, for example,
will likely add about $2.7 billion to its 2018 profits, of which it’s very generously allocating 5 percent to employees. But money does not grow on trees—unless you happen to be a large financial institution for whom billions of dollars are about to appear out of thin air—
so, before anyone gets carried away:
Bank of America has eliminated a free checking account popular with some lower-income customers, requiring them to keep more money at the bank to avoid a monthly fee.
This month, all remaining eBanking customers with the Charlotte, North Carolina, lender were switched into accounts that charge a $12 monthly fee unless the customer has a direct deposit of $250 or more or a minimum daily balance of $1,500.
To be fair, C.E.O.
Brian Moynihan noted earlier this month that
the bank’s shareholders can look forward to “the largest portion” of the tax-bill benefits, so the mooching poors probably shouldn’t have expected its windfall to trickle down.
how much corruption charges and practices they gonna do until someone burn that bytch down?
