According to a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, few workers would be affected if the cap on federal payroll taxes were lifted. Currently, the payroll tax — which funds Social Security and Medicare — is only applied to an individual’s first $110,100 in wages, meaning that middle-class and low-income workers pay the tax on their entire income, while the wealthy pay it on only a fraction.

As CEPR found, just 5.8 percent of workers would be affected if the cap were eliminated, while just 1.4 percent would be affected by a proposal currently before Congress that would apply the tax to income over $250,000 (but not on income earned between $110,100 and $250,000):

Eliminating the payroll tax cap would ensure Social Security could pay full benefits for nearly 75 years. However, this simple solution is ignored by conservatives, who would rather take the more regressive step of raising the retirement age, or simply privatize the program. And it certainly doesn’t help that the mainstream media consistently misinforms the public about Social Security’s financial health, ginning up a “crisis” while ignoring that one simple step would wipe the crisis away entirely.

During a press conference today, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) reacted to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) suggestion that the Bush tax cuts only be extended for those making less than $1 million by saying that such a move would hurt small businesses and therefore job creation. In fact, he claimed that half of those making more than $1 million annually are small business people:

“I believe that raising taxes at this point in our recovery is a big mistake,” Boehner said at a Capitol press conference when asked about Pelosi’s letter…“Even under Ms. Pelosi’s argument, half of those who would get this higher tax are small-business people that are sub-Chapter S or other types of pass-through entities,” Boehner said. “At a time when we are trying to help small businesses create jobs, this proposal would kill jobs.”

This statistic is simply not true. In fact, it’s false according to Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel. When Boehner made the same claim regarding millionaires and small businesses last year, FactCheck.org contacted Boehner’s office, and Steel “quickly admitted that the speaker was mistaken.”

Under a reasonable definition of small businesses, just 13 percent of millionaires can be considered small business owners. And just 0.5 percent of the nation’s small business owners cross that income threshold, making them the absolute top of the income scale.

Plus, at the end of the day, even if a millionaire makes his millions via a business that is considered small, the income tax is levied on take-home pay, not business profits. Anyone taking home $1 million annually should be taxed like a millionaire.

A favorite conservative myth is that raising taxes on millionaires at the state level will chase those millionaires away to other states. That was the rationale Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) used to justify vetoing a millionaires surtax…twice.

However, the data doesn’t back up that claim. Steve Roth at Angry Bear used this chart showing that millionaires simply don’t congregate in low-tax states. Roth found that “of the 12 states with the highest concentration of millionaires, 10 (83%) have above- or at-trend (in this case, median) income tax rates.”

This jibes with a report from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst which showed that “the evidence available in the research literature suggests that the worst fears of the policy debates over raising additional revenue from high-income households to sustain spending on public services are unlikely to materialize. The rich will not go on strike. They will not cease working, stop investing, or even move.”

The Washington Post reported last week that dozens of candidates being promoted by the National Republican Congressional Committee have refused to sign the anti-tax pledge circulated by Americans for Tax Reform and its president, Grover Norquist. The ATR pledge asks Republican candidates to promise never to raise taxes at any time for any reason, but GOPers have been wavering on it in increasing numbers over the last several months.

Joining the list of Republicans not interested in signing Norquist’s pledge is Brendan Doherty, who is running for the seat in Rhode Island’s first congressional district:

“Brendan has not signed the ATR pledge and has no plans to sign it,” Doherty spokesman Robert Coupe told WPRI.com, using the acronym for Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform. [...]

“The premise behind this and similar pledges that seek to tie the hands of candidates and elected officials tends to result in greater division and increased gridlock in Congress, at a time when we need to seek consensus and common-sense solutions,” Coupe said.

“Brendan has called repeatedly for comprehensive tax reform to simplify the tax code, close loopholes and create a tax plan that treats middle class families fairly and allows small businesses to compete and create jobs,” he continued. “That is Brendan’s commitment to the citizens of Rhode Island and his pledge is to provide the real leadership that is needed in Congress right now.”

Of course, Doherty is running in a heavily Democratic district, which may have something to do with his decision to ignore Norquist’s directive. Earlier this year, Rep. Tim Johnson (R-IL) blasted the pledge, saying, “I think anybody who doesn’t indicate their willingness to look at revenues — expiration of tax loopholes, tax credits, increase in contribution to Social Security, which is a tax, and otherwise — would be disingenuous and irresponsible.“

During an interview today, Honeywell CEO David Cote — who President Obama named to the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission — told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that he believes the U.S. corporate tax rate should be zero. Cote added that the only reason his desired rate won’t happen is because “from a fairness perspective, nobody would be able to stand it”:

SORKIN: David, I have a tax question for you. What do you think the ultimate effective tax rate should be on corporations?

COTE: Zero.

SORKIN: Zero?

COTE: The problem is from a fairness perspective, nobody would be able to stand it. But at the the end of the day, jobs come from companies and if we wanted to create the most effective foreign direct investment pipeline you’ve ever seen, we would have the lowest rate possible.

Watch it:

Cote’s belief that a low corporate tax rate will spur job creation stands at odds with the country’s current experience. After all, U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40-year-low in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. actually has one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the developed world. However, job creation has been slow, if steady.

“Our corporate tax rate last year, effectively, in terms of taxes paid for the United States, was around 12 percent, which is well below those existing in most of the industrialized countries around the world,” explained billionaire investor Warren Buffet. “Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness.”

Cote made $37 million in total compensation in 2011, while spending the last few years busting unions and driving down pay and benefits for his company’s workers.