We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York today said he is hesitant to support President Obama’s tax proposals because, “There are people making 250, 300 [thousand dollars] in many of our states who are not rich.”
Actually, Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that married couples with income between $250,000 and $300,000 would get to keep 99 percent of their Bush tax cuts, on average, under the tax plan promoted by President Obama last year.
That plan, which the President continues to tout, would extend the Bush income tax cuts for the first $250,000 of income a married couple receives, or the first $200,000 of income an unmarried taxpayer receives.
This means that a married couple making $250,100 would pay higher taxes on just one-hundred dollars of income at most. President Obama’s plan would continue the tax cuts for income even beyond $250,000/$200,000 for many taxpayers once deductions and other breaks are factored in.
As a result, CTJ found that three quarters of all couples in the $250,000 to $300,000 income range would continue to enjoy all of their Bush income tax cuts if President Obama’s plan was in effect in 2011.
Another report from CTJ explains that 84 percent of the revenue savings under the President’s tax plan would come from taxpayers with incomes exceeding $1 million. The report also explains that married couples with income above $250,000 and unmarried taxpayers with income above $200,000 are the richest 2.6 percent of Americans. Even in Senator Schumer’s state of New York, only 3.5 percent of taxpayers have incomes exceeding the $250,000/$200,000 threshold. If they can’t afford to pay higher taxes, who can?
Some of the taxpayers Senator Schumer is worried about would actually pay less under President Obama’s plan. For example, a childless married couple making $250,000 in wages and taking the standard deduction in 2011 would pay $935 less in income taxes if President Obama’s plan was in effect.
President Obama’s tax plan would allow the tax rates for the top two income tax brackets to revert to what they were at the end of the Clinton years. The President’s plan would also adjust the income tax brackets so that a married couple with income below $250,000 (or an unmarried taxpayer with income below $200,000) cannot possibly be affected by the top two income tax rates.
This adjustment in the tax brackets would result in a tax cut for some taxpayers, including the $935 tax cut for the married couple in the example above.
Here’s the technical explanation. There are six income tax brackets. The President’s plan pushes up the level of income you must have before you’re affected by the fifth bracket. That would mean that a portion of income that is currently taxed in the fifth income tax bracket would be taxed instead in the fourth income tax bracket, which has a lower tax rate. (Interested wonks can go to page 128 of the President’s budget blueprint that explains this arcane adjustment.)
And just in case anyone is concerned that the taxpayers described by Senator Schumer are small business people who will lay off all their employees in response to even the slightest possibility of higher tax bills, see CTJ’s report, The Bush Tax Cuts and Small Business.