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A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice
finds that the “Plan B” tax proposal that House Speaker John Boehner plans to put to a vote in the House of Representatives would allow the richest one percent of Americans to pay $36,000 less in federal income taxes, on average, than they would pay under President Obama’s most recent proposal.
Under Plan B, the poorest three-fifths of Americans would pay more in federal income taxes, on average, than they would pay under the President’s latest plan.
The latest tax proposals from Speaker Boehner and President Obama show that their respective positions on taxes have moved very slightly towards each other.
President Obama’s major proposals for the personal income tax would have, in their original version, saved $1.4 trillion compared to what would happen if Congress extended the Bush tax cuts and made no other changes to the tax code. As illustrated in the table on the following page, the President’s latest proposal, which became public December 17, would save 85 percent of that amount. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner’s Plan B would save 24 percent of that amount.
Compared to current law (compared to what would happen if Congress does nothing), both of these proposals would lose trillions of dollars over the next decade.
