Four years ago, fresh off what seemed at the time to be an unusually bitter and divided presidential election, lawmakers gathered in late December to do something rare: They cut a deal. The “fiscal cliff” compromise left almost no one happy. It neither supercharged nor tanked the economy. But it did resolve what had been a 12-year argument over how much to tax high-earning Americans.

That resolution is about to be overturned, with big implications for, well, how much rich people pay in taxes.

The Internal Revenue Service keeps track of the effective tax rate every year for the 400 highest-earning American taxpayers. There’s a clear pattern in its data, which now run through 2014: When Bush and Congress cut top income tax rates and taxes on capital gains in 2001 and 2003, high earners paid a lower share of their income in taxes. After the fiscal cliff deal, that share increased, from a low of about 17 percent to more than 23 percent.

You can reasonably anticipate that average tax rate will fall again, under the tax changes that President-elect Donald Trump is pushing.

Trump talked a lot about tax cuts on his road to the presidency. He mostly emphasized reductions for the middle class, but his plan would actually deliver its largest benefits by far to the very top sliver of income-earners, in absolute dollars and in percentage terms. (The House Republican plan is even more concentrated in its benefits for the very rich, independent analyses find.)

Trump breaks from previous Republican presidents on many economic issues, particularly trade and immigration, but his tax plan includes the same top rate that candidate George W. Bush proposed in 2000.

Bush didn’t quite reach his campaign goal of a 33 percent top marginal income tax rate; he had to settle for 35 percent. The fiscal cliff deal raised that rate back to nearly 40 percent. In between, Democrats and Republicans sparred repeatedly about that number. The debate in 2012 between President Obama and Mitt Romney, wasn’t really about rolling back the “Bush tax cuts.” Both candidates wanted to keep the cuts that helped low-, middle- and even some high-income earners. The big question was whether to keep the rate low for the very rich.

Trump muddied that debate on the trail. His plan quite clearly sides with Bush, Romney and lower rates on top earners. His rhetoric, at times, suggested otherwise – and has continued to since his election, with his Treasury pick, Steven Mnuchin, suggesting that Trump will insist top earners receive no net tax cut in any deal.

Many economists consider that pledge impossible, because there aren’t enough loopholes to close, to offset the gains from rate cuts that Trump is proposing for high earners.

The likelier scenario is that Trump and the congressional GOP will pass a plan that reduces taxes on the rich, in hopes of spurring faster economic growth. Democrats will object; campaign lines will be drawn. The issue could loom large in the midterm congressional elections, and in 2020. The fiscal cliff will prove a historical footnote. The battle over top rates will drag into another decade, and maybe beyond.

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