Barack Obama Offers Tax Cuts For Most

Barack Obama spoke before the Tax Policy Center and said we need to overhaul our tax system. He wants to cut taxes for the poor and middle class, and raise taxes for the wealthiest and corporations. Obama introduced his tax plan which has four main parts. Obama says the tax system now is unfair because, “Instead of working to find ways to relieve the burden on the middle class, we’ve developed creative ways to remove the burden from the well-off. Instead of having all of us pay our fair share, we’ve got over $1 trillion worth of loopholes in the corporate tax code.” Obama adds, “This isn’t the invisible hand of the market at work. It’s the successful work of special interests. For decades, we’ve seen a successful strategy to ride anti-tax sentiment in this country toward tax cuts that favor wealth, not work. And for decades, we’ve seen the gaps in wealth in this country grow wider, while the costs to working people are greater.” With his plan the tax cut to the middle class could be about 80 billion dollars. According to Obama, “the Bush tax cuts gave the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans a tax cut that was twice as large as the middle class. At a time when Americans are working harder than ever, we are taxing income from work at nearly twice the level that we’re taxing gains for investors.” He says he wants to restore fairness and simplicity to the tax code. “I’ll end the preferential treatment that’s built into our tax code by eliminating corporate loopholes and tax breaks. We shouldn’t be distorting our tax code to benefit a few powerful interests – we should be insisting that everyone pays their fair share, and when I’m President, they will, Obama said. He said he would penalize companies for using secretive offshore tax havens that are used to avoid paying taxes.
The first part of Obama’s plan is to give the working people a tax cut. He plans on giving a $500 tax cut per person, or $1000 per working family. He says because, “this credit would be greater than their income tax bill, my proposal would eliminate all income taxes for 10 million working Americans.” The second part of his proposal is to provide a universal homeowners’ tax credit. This will give every homeowner, including those that don’t itemize, a mortgage interest credit. The third thing he wants to do is a progressive tax cut for America’s seniors. Obama says, “When I’m President, we’ll work to see that no retiree making less than $50,000 each year has to pay income tax.” This will cut about 7 million people off the tax roll. His final idea is to simplify the tax code. He says he has a plan where most Americans will be able to do their taxes in about 5 minutes. I guess he doesn’t care about all those tax preparers he is putting out of work.
Alan Cosgrove