WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. federal deficit surged to 208 billion U.S. dollars in May, up 42 percent compared to the same period last year, the Treasury Department's Wednesday data showed.
By the end of May, the cumulative deficit in the fiscal year 2019, which started Oct. 1, amounted to 739 billion dollars and had yet to outnumber the total deficit in the fiscal year 2018, which stood at 779 billion dollars.
The Treasury estimated that the federal deficit will exceed 1 trillion dollars by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act proposed by the Republican Party is expected to increase the federal deficit by 1.9 trillion dollars from 2018 to 2028, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimate.
The first eight months of the fiscal year 2019 saw corporate income taxes shrinking by some 10 billion dollars compared to the same period a year ago, while custom duties increased some 20 billion dollars due to the Trump administration's tariff hikes on U.S. trading partners, the Treasury figures showed.
The administration has touted the benefits of the tax cut to the U.S. economy, but studies have shown that due to the additional tariffs, a big chunk of American middle-income households' tax cut gains have already been shaved off.
On average, the bill would save 930 dollars in taxes for a middle-class family, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center said in a 2017 study. However, tariffs already in place would cost a U.S. household about 831 dollars, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concluded in March.
The remaining 100 dollars or so tax cut gains per family "will soon disappear" because of tariffs, Bloomberg News said on Friday.
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