Elect Obama and Pay More Taxes

Ned Barnett at The American Thinker points out the Four big lies regarding Obama's claim to only raise taxes on those making $250,000 a year or more. First, by letting the Bush Tax cuts expire , people making as little as $25,000 a year will see an effective tax increase. The Obama compaign claims letting a tax cut lapse is not really a tax increase, but it still effects my take home pay.

Second, Obama has proposed increasing the cap on the Social Security payroll tax, currently capped at S94,700 for a single individual in order to further fund the program, to the tune of $1 trillion - and thus increasing taxes on those people making between that $94k figure and $250k.

Thirdly, he has promised to increase the cpaitla gains tax, currently at 15%, to 20%. But a great many more Americans hav emoney invested in the stock market and other financial instruments.

"However, while only 1 percent of Americans make a quarter-million dollars, roughly 50 percent of all Americans have capital investments -- through IRAs, 401Ks, in pension plans and in personal portfolios. Most of that half of all Americans will feel this rise in their capital gains taxes.


Under "President" Obama, if you sell off a $100,000 investment -- perhaps to help put your children through college -- instead of paying $15,000 in capital gains taxes today, you'll pay $20,000 under Obama's plan. That's a full one-third more, and it applies no matter how much you earn."

Fourth, Obama has promised the increase taxes on corporations - but corporate taxes are paid not by corporations, but the customers of those coporations - meaning you and me. As Barnett puts it:

"When you buy a hot dog from a 7/11, you can see the clerk add the sales tax, but when a corporation's own taxes go up, you don't see it -- its automatic -- but they do the same thing. They build this tax into their product's price. Senator Obama knows this. He knows that even people who earn less than $250,000 will pay higher prices -- those pass-through taxes -- when corporate taxes go up."

Barnett finishes with a nice talbe showing a person's tax rates in 2000, 2003, 2004, and a projected figure for 2010 for someone (or a couple) making $25k, $50k, and $75k, all middle class incomes and the effects of the changes. And all show a four figure increase in tax payments, despite all the rhetorical flourishes.

Again, look at the bottom line.