Barack Obama held a press conference today to announce that he was going to raise taxes on top American producers.
He told the press, “I’m not proposing anything radical here.”
Obama’s tax hikes will affect 940,000 American households.
Bloomberg reported:
President Barack Obama’s plan to raise tax rates for the top 2 percent of U.S. households would mean higher taxes on the people who report 53 percent of business income reported on individual returns, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The nonpartisan analysts prepared the data at the request of Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the panel’s top Republican, said the document was “irrefutable proof” that tax rates shouldn’t go up.
“With our economy as weak as it is, it makes absolutely no sense to hit more and more small businesses with a tax hike,” he said in a statement.
The analysis doesn’t include data on the size of the businesses owned by top earners or estimates of how they would respond to higher tax rates. It doesn’t consider the corporate income tax or taxpayers subject to the alternative minimum tax.
If Congress doesn’t act, tax rates for income, capital gains, dividends and estates will increase in 2013. Obama wants to let existing tax cuts expire for married couples making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000.
According to JCT, next year 940,000 households within the top 2 percent will report net positive business income and will face marginal tax rates that would be 36 percent or 39.6 percent under Obama’s plan, up from 33 percent and 35 percent now. That represents 3.5 percent of taxpayers who have business income and 53 percent of net positive business income, the analysis said.
This follows the news that nearly 75% of Obamacare costs will fall on the backs of those Americans making less than $120,000 a year.
