How President Obama’s Tax Plan Raises Tax Payments for a Couple Earning $250,000 or Less

Tax Foundation:  “The Tax Foundation launched a new calculator last week that helps users see how their taxes might rise in 2011. In a FoxNews piece about it, we explained that some families making $250,000 or less could see a tax increase under Obama’s budget proposal, which would be a violation of his famous campaign promise not to raise taxes on families with incomes of $250,000 or less. Here’s how that would happen.”

Estimate Your 2011 Federal Income Tax with the Tax Calculator

Use MyTaxBurden.com‘s simple fill-in-the-blanks income tax calculator to estimate your 2011 federal income tax under any or all of the following scenarios:

  1. Congress allows all of the Bush tax cuts to expire;
  2. Congress acts to extend into 2011 all of the Bush tax cuts; and
  3. Congress passes the tax laws suggested in President Obama’s budget, letting some tax cuts expire, extending some, and enacting some new tax laws.

What Higher Taxes Will Really Mean

New York Times:  “The federal income tax increases over the next three years have led to lots of grumbling. But for all the back and forth about the percentages, something has been overlooked: what do these increases mean in real numbers? . . . high earners will be paying 17 to 19 percent more in taxes by 2013 than this year.  But these are just federal taxes.  That does not include state taxes or Social Security contributions, or property and sales taxes.”

Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class

Reuters:  “The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.  In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth. . . . Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1.”

Update on why the above link to a Reuters story no longer works: Presidential censorship – we should all be very worried when government can suppress the media.  “Obama administration aides appealed to the Reuters White House reporting team to kill a story by another reporter of the news service that suggested the president’s new budget blueprint included “backdoor” tax hikes.  A White House official told TPMDC the Reuters story was “falsely stating that the President’s budget raises taxes for middle class families, when in fact the opposite is true.”  The official said when the administration saw the story, published yesterday afternoon, they contacted one of the Reuters White House correspondents.”  See also “Reality Check on Taxes.”

Tax Hikes: An Economic Time Bomb

Wall St. Journal:  “if the Democratic economic policies continue nevertheless, this year will be nothing like the bitter economic January we will be living in a year from now.  Government spending has already hugely increased, and so has the size and scope of government, but next year there will also be substantial tax increases for a great many Americans. The first reason will be the expiration of the Bush tax cuts . The top personal income tax rate will rise next Jan. 1 to 39.6% from 35%, a hike of nearly one-eighth. The dividend tax rate will rise to 39.6%, more than 2½ times the current 15%. And the capital gains tax rate will rise by a third, to 20% from 15%. If the House health care bill had passed, all three of these rates would have risen to 45%.”

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