Middle class tax cuts

[hfojvt]

How I hate that phrase.

Especially when the Romney definition of middle class is used. Oh, how Romney got slammed when he used the same definition that Obama uses. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/mitt-doesnt-realize-that-median-income.html

Obama's original plan from 2010, gave

$163 billion in tax cuts to the top 20%
$14 billion in tax cuts to the bottom 20%

$42 billion in tax cuts to the bottom 40%

$38 billion in tax cuts to the middle 20%
$58 billion in tax cuts to the next 20%

or

$221 billion in tax cuts to the top 40%
$80 billion in tax cuts to the bottom 60%

THAT is called "middle class tax cuts?"

IF the country needs $301 billion in tax cuts - which I doubt we really NEED - I would much rather just see $3,010 sent to each household than to send $507 to households in the bottom 20% and $29,000 to households in the top 1%.

Yet we are being told by Democratic leaders that we need to make a deal to keep these "middle class tax cuts".

Like Dean Baker said so well "However, it is important that people understand that the Rubin-Clinton team is every bit as much about redistributing money from the rest of us to the very rich as the Republicans."

[Igel]

1. Romney and Obama cut off differed by $1.

At most.

As for tax cuts, you can only cut to 0% taxes. My kid pays no taxes. He can't have a tax decrease. A tax "refund" is when you get refunded what you paid (usually because it wasn't owed). That's different from having you make a tax profit.

That's the problem. Part of the (R) outrage in the last couple of rounds was increasing payments that brought net taxes owed for a year far(ther) below $0. We've fudged the meaning, so whenever one side hears "tax reduction" they know that might mean "refundable tax credit" that could result in people paying no taxes and yet get substantial refunds.

If you confuse the language so nobody knows what you might mean, they'll assume the worst. They play the game. We play the game. And everybody suffers, no matter who wins.

[hfojvt]

2. actually there are other taxes besides income taxes

even when I made $12,000 a year and paid no income taxes, I still paid $624 in payroll taxes for social security and $294 in payroll taxes for medicare.

Now, the payroll tax cut sucks because 2% of my salary is much smaller than 2% of a CEO's salary (or 2% of the cap).

But a payroll tax holiday on the first $10,000 in income would almost give $765 to every worker.

A policy like increasing the standard deduction by a thousand or two would generally save more money for the bottom and middle - because those at the top itemize their deductions rather than using the standard deduction.

But one of the main reasons so many people pay no federal income tax is because of all the tax cuts. Republicans are very happy to cut a poor person's tax from $50 to zero as a way to gain more support for cutting a richer persons taxes by $5,000.