Saturday, September 13, 2008

McCain and Obama Tax Plans

The Washington Post recently published a very useful graphic of how Sen. McCain's and Sen. Obama's proposed tax plans will affect taxpayers at a variety of income levels. For those of you trying to make sense of this issue, this should provide a good starting point:

According to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million.

1 comment:

Zachary Agush said...

This is very interesting. It seems that while Obama claims to be making a reasonable cut in taxes for 95% of Americans, 60% of whom make less than ~66,000 dollars a year, it only seems the average savings is -.03%. Meanwhile McCain's own tax cuts seems to be better since the average cut gives 'more' back. Of course Obama did state that his own initiatives would be funded through closing corporate loopholes and eliminating the breaks on the top 1%. It is yet to be seen if this will work.