Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The House GOP has scheduled a vote for later today on a $46 billion tax giveaway. H.R. 9, sponsored by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), would give a massive, deficit-financed windfall to hedge fund managers, sports team owners, celebrities and other wealthy people. It would increase tax compliance burdens on small businesses and actually incentivize businesses to put off making investments and new hires until 2013 or later. (For our full analysis, click here.) The White House has issued a veto threat.

In arguing that his bill would create jobs, Cantor is now touting an analysis by Gary Robbins of Fiscal Associates. Robbins, a leading purveyor of supply-side economics for decades, appears to be the only economist that Cantor could find to help sell his bill. Robbins was last heard from using recycled supply-side arguments to sing the praises of Herman Cain’s tremendously ill-conceived “9-9-9” tax plan as a paid consultant to the Cain campaign.

So if anyone is likely to conclude that Cantor’s tax cut is a good way to create jobs, it’s Robbins. But even his analysis finds that Cantor’s bill is a dud.

Robbins predicts that Cantor’s tax cut — a one-year, 20 percent deduction for businesses that qualify — would add $42.6 billion to the federal budget deficit. (That’s a little less than Congress’s official estimate of $46 billion because Robbins’ revenue estimates are based on his own assumptions about economic growth.) Robbins also estimates that such a one-year tax cut would create 39,000 jobs. So according to the analysis that Cantor is touting on his own website, H.R. 9 would increase the federal deficit by $1.1 million for every job created.

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House Republicans this week plan to vote on a bill proposed that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that is supposedly aimed at “small businesses,” but in reality would cut taxes for millionaires. Due to its non-existent targeting to actual small businesses, the cut would benefit hedge fund managers, wealthy lawyers, professional sports teams, and Oprah’s production company.

Despite all this, Cantor is still “puzzled” that President Obama would threaten to veto the bill, which he did yesterday. On CNBC this morning, Cantor accused Obama of not caring about small businesses due to his opposition to the tax giveaway:

Well, listen, the President’s now issued a veto threat against the bill, which is kind of puzzling, because the President has continued to say he’s for small business, he’s for the middle class, and yet he’s now denying any help to small businesses, who frankly could use a 20 percent tax cut.

Watch it:

Cantor’s tax boondoggle would cost $46 billion and gives millionaires an average tax cut of $45,000. Meanwhile, for actual small businesses that can’t afford a platoon of accountants and lawyers, the tax cut will add another layer of complexity to the tax code. The IRS says that the tax cut would increase tax compliance costs and require businesses to perform additional analyses.

Senate Republicans last night successfully blocked the Buffett Rule, a proposed tax on millionaires that the GOP says would unfairly hit America’s small businesses and job creators. “It represents a huge tax increase on job creators,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on MSNBC last week. “About 80 percent of our businesses file their taxes as individuals, so they would get hit by this Buffett Rule. Everybody thinks we’re just going to tax the hedge fund manager and the movie star, what you’re getting is that successful small business.”

But claims like Ryan’s are wrong, according to data from the U.S. Treasury. In fact, the Buffett Rule would hit just 1 percent of America’s small businesses, CNN Money reports:

But federal data show that only 1% of small business owners have enough income to qualify for the Buffett Rule, according to the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis, which reviewed filings in 2007. The report, which was issued last year, examined 20 million tax returns — and only 273,000 would meet the Buffett Rule threshold.

Economists and tax experts don’t expect the landscape has changed drastically since that study was done. Most small firms are sole proprietorships, one-person operations like Rebel Luxe in Los Angeles.

The Buffett Rule would only hit households with incomes above $1 million that do not already pay a certain tax rate, a situation that is unlikely to apply to small businesses, because the vast majority of small business owners don’t earn $1 million a year and those that do are already taxed at normal income tax rates.

Rather, the rule, which would hit an estimated 217,000 households in 2015, would have a greater effect on individuals whose income is subject to lower capital gains and carried interest taxes, or those who use various loopholes to dramatically lower their tax rate. As the Treasury report shows, small businesses aren’t likely to be in that group, no matter what Republicans (and some Democrats) say.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With Tax Day approaching, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the House GOP are pushing a $46 billion boondoggle they call the “Small Business Tax Cut Act of 2012.” As ThinkProgress has previously reported, the bill is really just a windfall for rich people, many of whom, like hedge fund managers, owners of sports teams, celebrities, lawyers, and lobbyists are not most people’s idea of “small businesses.” Cantor’s tax giveaway, half of which goes to millionaires, is also among the least effective ways to create jobs. (Our full analysis is here.)

So what do actual small businesses get? A big headache, according to a new “tax complexity analysis” of Cantor’s bill from the Joint Committee on Taxation (Congress’s nonpartisan tax experts) and the IRS. By adding a complicated new provision to the tax code, Cantor’s bill would mean small businesses would have more paperwork, more time wasted on tax filing, and more disputes with the IRS:

It is anticipated that small businesses that elect to apply the provision will need to keep additional records due to this provision, and that additional regulatory guidance will be needed…It is anticipated that the provision will result in an increase in disputes between small businesses and the IRS. [...]

The provision likely will increase the tax preparation costs for most affected small businesses. Small businesses will have to perform additional analysis concerning whether the small business has 500 or fewer employees and which income qualifies for the deduction allowed under the provision. For income that is determined to be eligible for the deduction under the provision, small businesses will be required to perform additional calculations to determine the amount of the deduction…[S]mall businesses will be required to undertake calculations to determine the amounts of costs that are allocable to domestic business gross receipts. In some cases, small businesses would not have been required otherwise to perform these calculations but for the provision.

Due to the detailed calculations required by the provision, it is anticipated that the Secretary of the Treasury will have to create a new form for qualified small businesses to compute the deduction and will have to make appropriate revisions to several types of income tax forms and instructions. In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury will have to issue guidance to carry out the purposes of the provision.

The IRS adds that the new tax form required by Cantor’s bill, Form 8903-A, “would be complicated.”

By creating a complicated new loophole, available to some business but not to others according to arbitrary rules, and favoring the very rich, the Cantor bill epitomizes everything that is wrong about the tax code.

Ironically, the House GOP just passed a budget bemoaning the tax code’s “labyrinth of deductions” and promising tax reform to close special loopholes and carveouts (though it did not identify a single loophole that it would close). In less than three weeks, House Republicans have done a complete 180, abandoning their showy commitment to tax reform and carving out a new $46 billion loophole. The Cantor bill is the “antithesis of tax reform” according to Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

But at least the GOP budget and the Cantor bill are consistent about one thing – more windfall tax cuts for the rich.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), fresh off a legislative victory with his fraud-inducing JOBS Act, is pushing another bill aimed at helping small businesses. The legislation is supposed to give small businesses a tax cut but instead, it cuts taxes for millionaires, professional sports franchises, and businesses like Oprah Winfrey’s production company. While giving millionaires a $45,000 tax cut, many small businesses actually wouldn’t qualify for the tax cut Cantor proposed.

Those facts, however, aren’t stopping him from running advertisements in his Richmond-area district touting the bill, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Cantor rolled out the Small Business Tax Cut Act of 2012 on March 21, and he’s promoting the plan in a TV ad featuring a half-dozen local businesspeople. The ad is airing in his district.

The 30-second spot, released by his campaign operation, opens with Mark Oley of Westwood Pharmacy, followed by Suzanne Wolstenholme of Homemades by Suzanne.

Four others also make appearances in the ad, which is expected to run for the next two to three weeks.

“If we believe in free markets, if we believe that small businesses really are the growth engine, we ought to just empower them by allowing them to keep more of their money so that they can retain and hire more workers,” Cantor said Thursday. But as Pat Garofalo noted last week, Cantor’s bill “fundamentally misunderstands the problems facing actual small businesses, which is that there’s no demand in the economy for their goods or services.” Without demand, businesses have no incentive to expand and hire.

Once again, Republicans are betting that its single trick of cutting taxes for every millionaire (“small businesses” and “job creators,” to borrow from their parlance) will stimulate job growth. The problem is, there’s no evidence that it will.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Earlier today ThinkProgress reported that the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to approve a proposal by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that is misleadingly entitled the Small Business Tax Cut Act.

People who have read the bill and not just its title, however, have noted that it is extremely poorly targeted at small businesses. It is, in fact, just another tax cut for rich people. Among the biggest beneficiaries would be the owners of extremely profitable businesses like Oprah Winfrey’s production company and professional sports teams like the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, as well as highly paid professionals like lawyers, lobbyists, doctors, and consultants.

The Tax Policy Center has now estimated who benefits from Cantor’s bill. Among TPC’s findings:

– The top 1 percent would receive an average tax cut that is 1000 times bigger than the average tax cut for people in the middle quintile ($23 vs. $23,000). The top 0.1 percent would receive an average tax cut of more than $130,000.

– Half of the tax benefits would go to millionaires, who comprise less than one-half of one percent of all taxpayers and only 4 percent of actual small business owners according to a recent Treasury study. Millionaires, on average, would get a tax cut of $45,000 — almost as much as median household income in 2010.

– Business owners with annual income of $200,000 or less — who comprise more than 75 percent of small business owners — would receive only 16 percent of the benefit from Cantor’s bill.

The Cantor bill would cost $46 billion and is not paid for. More debt-financed tax cuts for the rich: haven’t we tried that before?

The House Ways and Means Committee today marked up a bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that purports to give small businesses a 20 percent tax cut in order to spur hiring. We’ve already noted that the bill’s overly expansive definition of small business means super profitable hedge funds and law firms that don’t need additional employees would still receive a huge tax break.

And the bill’s problems certainly don’t end there. As Citizens for Tax Justice noted today, Cantor’s bill will also give hugely profitable operations like Oprah Winfrey’s production company and professional sports teams a big tax break:

While the legislation caps the amount of the deduction (at half of non-employee payroll), there is no limitation on the type or amount of income that business can have. So highly profitable operations like Oprah Winfrey’s production company or the Trump Tower Sales & Leasing office would both qualify for the deduction simply because they have fewer than 500 employees on payroll.

Who else would qualify? Professional sports teams (including teams owned by Mitt Romney’s friends) with their multi-million-dollar salaries to non-owner players. So would private equity firms, hedge funds, and other “small businesses” with income in the millions, or even billions, of dollars, along with most of the top law and lobbying firms inside the Beltway and elsewhere.

Adding insult to injury, many truly small businesses won’t qualify for the tax break because the cut is only available to businesses whose employees are non-owners. So a family business in which all the family members share ownership will get nothing at all, while Oprah’s production company walks away with a tax cut

This bill, like so many put forth by the GOP, fundamentally misunderstands the problems facing actual small businesses, which is that there’s no demand in the economy for their goods or services. Businesses simply have no reason to expand without the reasonable expectation of more customers, and giving an already profitable firm a big tax break won’t entice them to act any differently. As the chief economist for the conservative National Federation of Independent Business explained, “if you give a small business guy $20,000 he’ll say, ‘I could buy a new delivery truck but I have nobody to deliver to.’”

Instead, the GOP is hoping once again that its tax cut snake oil will have some effect. But as a new study released yesterday shows, “there’s no there there” when it comes to tax cuts promoting economic growth.