So looking at that chart, we see that under McCain, everyone gets a tax cut, at least nominally. Most people will have their taxes cut something like a few hundred dollars... unless you are really really rich, and then you get a new Jaguar. The question naturally follows is how this is supposed to work when we are already several trillion in debt? Ah, who cares about "fuzzy math" when I'm gonna get me a new DVD player! Let's not even mention that over the last eight years, almost all of the economic growth went to the top one percent of the income scale... and everyone else actually lost real income. It sure seems to me like those guys need to get EVEN MORE cash, subsidized by the rest of us...
Under McCain, the rich would see their tax burden ease. Under Obama, their rates would rise dramatically.
For much of the campaign, the two candidates have talked sparingly and
obliquely about how they would deal with affluent taxpayers. But a
recent volley of acid-edged campaign ads stirred up the tax issue, and
a question posed last weekend by Orange County pastor Rick Warren
zeroed in on how both men defined "rich."
Obama said the dividing line was an income of $250,000 a year, while
McCain responded somewhat flippantly that it was $5 million. McCain
aides said later that the senator was joking, but his remark quickly
became a campaign flashpoint.
"I guess if you're making $3 million a year, you're middle class,"
Obama sniped, prompting a McCain aide to fire back: "It's not the job
of the government to define who is rich."
close look at their proposals shows that the differences fall neatly
along the traditional policy gulf that has long divided Republicans and
Democrats: liberating the wealthy with tax cuts to stimulate the
nation's prosperity versus raising their rates to redistribute the tax
burden and pay for crucial government programs.
"The real fault lines are over how to treat people in the highest tax
brackets. It gets to the heart of their economic philosophies," said
Leonard E. Burman, a senior fellow with the Tax Policy Center, a
nonpartisan Washington-based tax reform group that has questioned the
details of both tax plans.
McCain's plan would cater to wealthy taxpayers and corporations by
extending and expanding President Bush's tax cuts, slashing corporate
taxes and weakening the estate tax, but it would also aid taxpayers
across the board by making the full Bush cuts permanent.
A deficit hawk and formerly a critic of the massive tax cuts launched
in 2001 by the Bush administration, McCain now embraces the tax
policies of supply-side economists who contend that lifting the tax
yoke on the rich would encourage investment and stimulate the economy.
"Wealth creates wealth," McCain said during a primary debate in
Michigan last year.
Under his proposals, McCain would make all the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax
cuts permanent. That would keep the two highest tax brackets at their
current rates of 33% and 35% -- rather than reverting to 36% and 39.6%,
where they were during the Clinton administration.
McCain also has proposed a sharp reduction in corporate taxes. He would
pare the two highest corporate tax brackets, 34% and 35%, down to 25%.
The top bracket would be immediately eliminated, and the 34% bracket
would be phased down to 25% between 2009 and 2014.
He would also maintain the 15% tax rates on dividends and capital gains
for the highest-tier taxpayers. And starting in 2010, McCain would
substantially reduce the estate tax. He would increase the exemption on
inherited funds from $3.5 million to $5 million and sharply lower taxes
on remaining wealth from 45% to 15% -- moves that would enable affluent
families to hold on to more of their wealth.
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