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CHARTS: How Obama’s Tax Plan Still Gives A Tax Cut To Wealthy Americans

Opponents of President Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts on income up to $250,000, but to let the cuts for higher incomes expire, continue to claim that he is levying a massive tax increase on the wealthy and small business owners, even though the small business point has been repeatedly debunked and the rich would still receive a tax cut under Obama’s plan.

As we pointed out when Obama proposed the plan, every single taxpayer still receives a tax cut on income up to $250,000. As this Citizens for Tax Justice chart shows, the size of remaining tax cut dwindles the more income an earner makes, and those just above the $250,000 line would still keep nearly all of the tax cut they received under George W. Bush:

The Tax Policy Center also crunched the numbers for the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and found that many of the richest Americans will barely see their tax liabilities change. For the 95th-99th percentiles of income earners, the tax liability hardly increases, according to TPC’s numbers:

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This may be hard for Republicans who oppose Obama’s plan to believe, but the only people who will truly see a sizable increase in their tax liabilities come from the top 1 percent of income earners. The rest — including the small businesses Republicans continue to cite — will hardly feel an impact at all.