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Some voters I talk to suspect that Barack Obama will raise taxes for the middle class, which is wrong. Americans who make less than $227,000 will pay substantially less in taxes under Obama’s tax plan.
Obama’s will substantially lower taxes for most Americans. People making under $112,000 a year would pay $300-$700 less in taxes than they would under John McCain’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Center. Americans making between $227,000 and $603,000 would pay just $12 more. Obama will restore fairness in the tax code by reversing the Bush tax breaks for corporations. In contrast, McCain’s tax plan is the same kind of approach as Bush’s, essentially consisting of keeping taxes low for “entrepreneurs” (including the super rich) and reducing the corporate tax rate.
Look at where the country is at. The national deficit over the last year is $693 billion, which the Bush tax cuts have clearly played a role in. The “trickle-down” effect of tax cuts for big business has not kept 605,000 jobs from being lost in this same year’s time. Has the Bush policy worked so wonderfully that we should just leave it alone, as McCain will?
Barack Obama’s policy favors small businesses and the working American majority. It includes the elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses, a $500 “Making Work Pay” tax credit for working families and the self-employed and tax credits for companies that maintain jobs in America rather than shipping them overseas. I don’t know about you, but this is my idea of a pro-growth, common sense tax policy.
MACKENZIE GIBSON
Grand Junction
8 Responses to “Obama’s tax plan makes sense”
Posted September 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
your living in a fantasy world if you think that your taxes won’t raise under an obama presidency.
Posted September 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
The above seems to be pretty straightforward. Can you address them specifically instead of just tossing out an unsubstantiated generality?
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 7:09 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
I would be glad to address the issue. The top 5% of income earners pay more than 50% of the tax burden with the top 1% taking on even more of the tax burden. Individuals falling below the $250,000 mark pay substanitially less taxes already. Small business makes up 75% of that top 5% so by increasing the tax on those individuals you can count on small business owners having less captial to invest in their business, less benefits etc. Most people making below that magical $250,000 have enough deductions that their actual tax burden is minimial. If you have a couple of kids a home etc you more than likely get most of what you pay in back. JFK and Ronald Reagan understood this very well. Lowering taxes actually increase the revenues to the government because business invest and the revenues from sales tax etc increase from a robust economy. Job loss occurs because right now the United State has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Ireland figured this out and now their economy is booming because they lowered corporate taxes. Many US pharmaceutical companies and other industries are moving their because of the beneficial tax rates. The other problem is we have politicians on both sides spending like their is no tomorrow. Remember every campaign promise to provide some service like healthcare, prescription drugs etc has to be paid for. The only way government makes money is to tax you. Bill clinton promised a very similar program in 1993 and he raised taxes on everyone, including those on fixed income from social security. What we need is a president, congress and senate that actually understand things. Obama’s financial advisors Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines both ran Fannie/Freddie and Johnson had some links to country wide. So that is less than encouraging. Americans need to quit depending on government to give them stuff, and demand that our politicians be frugal with our money. The only way to do that is let them hear your voice and by voting.
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 7:17 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Whoa..Whoa…Whoa….
“Small Business owners” make up 75% of the top 5% of the country’s income?
What’s your source for the data on that one, tbrock?
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 8:07 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
I had the same question in mind.
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 8:19 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Yeah, that doesn’t seem right. And besides, small business owners can set their own salaries to take advantage of nearly any tax structure. If there is money left over, it goes to build the business, thus (gasp!) strengthening the economy!
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 8:34 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Speaking from the perspective of a small business owner, i really doubt that number. It will be interesting to hear the source.
Posted September 19th, 2008 at 9:40 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Factcheck.org breaks it down:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html
How Many Would Actually Pay More?
McCain is right about one thing. Many small-business owners would indeed see their taxes go up if Obama is elected and raises the top income-tax rates. According to a survey from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, about eight out of 10 small-business owners responding to the poll report that they are organized legally in a way that would require them to pay taxes on their business income as individuals, rather than as a corporation. But since Obama’s plan wouldn’t affect those making less than $250,000 for couples, or about $200,000 for singles, we need to estimate how many would fall into those high-income categories.
Obama’s plan, according to his economic policy director Jason Furman, would return the top two federal income-tax rates to what they were before Bush lowered them. In addition, Obama would adjust the income-tax brackets to ensure that no married couple making under $250,000 or single filer making under $200,000 would pay the top rates.
The actual number of business owners who would be affected turns out to be well under a million, and the number of employers would be even less. Based on the number of taxpayers who now report any sort of business income on their returns, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center projects that 663,608 taxpayers with business income, or business losses, will fall into the top two tax brackets in 2009, when any Obama tax changes would first take effect. Not all of those can properly be called “small-business owners,” however. Some are farmers. Many are lawyers, accountants or other professionals who get some of their income in the form of partnership distributions. Others may be passive investors in real-estate partnerships or similar investment arrangements and not really persons who own and manage a business.
It is also not clear how many who report business income actually employ any workers. In 2004, the Tax Policy Center found that hundreds of thousands of individual taxpayers who had business income from partnerships or subchapter-S corporations (whose owners pay taxes as individuals) did not claim any tax deductions for employee expenses. For all these reasons we judge that the actual number of small-business employers who would face higher tax rates under Obama is probably far below 663,608, and certainly a far cry from McCain’s ridiculously inflated 23 million figure.
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