Friday, September 5, 2008

Obama Tax Policy and McCain Tax Policy Calculator

One of the main ambitions for this site is to correct misperceptions rooted in McCain and Palin's false statements about Obama's tax plan. Despite the Republicans' best attempts to confuse you, here are three key facts:

  • 95% of working families would have a tax cut under Obama's proposals.
  • 100 million Americans would have NO tax cut under McCain's proposals.
  • Most Americans would have a larger tax cut under Obama than under McCain.
At left is a link to a tax calculator site. It allows you to calculate the rough impact of each of the candidate's tax proposals on your tax bill, given your income, number of dependents, and filing status.

I decided today to change the ObamaTaxCut.com link to this site rather than this one. The new one is more straightforward and I think easier for people to interpret. The numbers for both sites come straight out of three tables produced by the Tax Policy Center as part of their comprehensive analysis of the candidates' proposals. The tables are this one for elderly families, this one for married couples, and this one for singles and people filing as head of household.

For a description of the details of the Obama tax proposals, see this article by his advisers in the Wall Street Journal or this description on Obama's site. Here is our earlier commentary on McCain's tax plan.

If you're looking for a detailed, fully objective description and analysis of the candidate's proposals, you should see the Tax Policy Center's analysis of both candidate's plans. Here is the full report and the more manageable executive summary.

9 comments:

Joe F. Clark said...

I have to say that I am pretty tired of hearing from McCain's supporters and advisors that Obama is going to raise everyone's taxes. In fact, McCain said it in his convention speech. Good grief are they all deaf?

I think all of Obama's advisors should start saying that McCain is going to raise taxes. If they can get away with lying about it repeatedly then perhaps we should consider that tactic as well. Oh wait, that would be dishonest.

tallred said...

Is there a tax policy calculator available that includes both tax policy and health care policy? As an employee who receives "full medical", it appears that a President McCain would fairly substantially raise my tax burden. I just haven't been able to approximate it myself.

Unknown said...

Finally... a site which gives the facts. I'm linking this page wherever I can. McCain has sold his soul; please, please please won't someone suggest to someone who will listen at the Obama camp: Barack Obama needs to get these economic policy facts on the national news somehow - fighting with the demonstrable facts instead of get down to McCain's level with innuendo. The facts are sufficient, if presented in such a way that people can see they are true. That's the fight I want to see rise up in Obama and Biden.

Anonymous said...

If you want the real facts you should check out the Tax Policy Center...they have done an actual analysis of both candidates versus this site, which is obviously just a group of people working on getting Obama in office. As an independent, I would like to have the FACTS, not your OPINIONS.

Don Pedro said...

Dear anonymous,
We definitely concur that people should check out the Tax Policy Center analysis.

That's why we linked to their site!

The tax calculator we link to takes its numbers directly from the Tax Policy Center's analysis.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know what percentage of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year?

Anonymous said...

This is a bunch of lies and stretched truths...You can't beleive Republicans OR DEMOCRATS. First off how can Obama give 95% of working families a tax cut when 40% of working families don't even pay taxes. Second, Obama has stated that he will let the Bush tax cuts expire - which in essence is an increase in tax. Don't fall for this crap - they are all liers!

Anonymous said...

can anyone attest to the veracity of the WSJ's 10/13/08 lead editorial, where they lay out the marginal tax impact of O's plan? that the marginal tax impact on people making less than $100k see a huge marginal tax increase, when you add in all the refundable tax credits? that paying refunds to non tax paying 'taxpayers' amounts to welfare?

can we really get a balanced observation?

whatscleggcookin said...

The answer to the question about small business's that make more then 250k

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html

Short answer. about 663k business would pay more under Obama. the rest would pay the same or less.