If you’re nervous about your finances today, wait until the Obama tax plan kicks in.
From Ned Barnett at The American Thinker, who by way of background notes that over the past 10 years, he’s earned from $50,000 to $100,000 per year — so he’s not in the category of the “more than $250K ‘evil rich’”:
I’ve worked as the state level media and strategy director on three Presidential election campaigns — I know how “promises” work — so I analyzed Senator Obama’s promises by looking for loopholes.
The first loophole was easy to find: Senator Obama doesn’t “count” allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse as a tax increase. Unless the cuts are re-enacted, rates will automatically return to the 2000 level. Senator Obama claims that letting a tax cut lapse — allowing the rates to return to a higher levels — is not actually a “tax increase.” It’s just the lapsing of a tax cut.
See the difference?
Neither do I.
When those cuts lapse, my taxes are going up — a lot — but by parsing words, Senator Obama justifies his claim that he won’t actively raise taxes on 95 percent of working Americans, even while he’s passively allowing tax rates to go up for 100% of Americans who actually pay Federal income taxes.
Making this personal, my Federal Income Tax will increase by $3,824 when those tax cuts lapse. That not-insignificant sum would cover a couple of house payments or help my two boys through another month or two of college.
Barnett encourages us to go to this page on the IRS website, look up the tax tables for 2000 and 2007, and check his assumptions for ourselves.
In addition, Obama plans to eliminate the income cap on Social Security tax. So, for example, individuals making more than $94,700 will now pay an extra 12.4 percent tax on every dollar earned above that figure.
And he’s going to raise Capital Gains taxes. Too bad for you if you are one of the 50 percent of Americans who own stocks in, say, your 401K, and the market turns around.
Ah. No worries. What’s important is that 67 percent of Americans BELIEVE Obama is going to cut middle class taxes.
I bet he can keep insisting he’s cutting taxes, and his adoring public will continue to “know” that he has. Just like they “know” so much else about him. Democracy in action!