That is the rub isn’t it? If you want a middle class you have to pay for it.
When have they offered any legislative option lately. They just race bait these days. Pretend Russia is the cause of all problem while being bling that it was Obama that didn’t watch them.
You probably wouldn’t see Dems legislative proposals unless you spend a fair bit of time digging through Paul Ryan’s trash can.
I’m curious what folks think their effective tax rate—including federal, state, city and county, if applicable—should be.
If the argument is, as I’ve often seen, that the government is wasteful and taxes too much for programs that we shouldn’t have and perhaps wars that we shouldn’t fight—and I’m not questioning the merits of those arguments—then what would be your preferred tax rate in a lean, efficient government?
Not to complain about waste but the question is what am I getting in the way of service for what I am paying.
If for instance I am paying 30 percent in the US and not getting healthcare then I would want to pay less.
If I am getting healthcare then I pay more.
Usually I want to see a wide economic benefit.
I agree with you. I’d like the federal government to offer more benefits, such as health care, and in return I will gladly pay the higher taxes to support it.
While JFK proposed tax cuts, I don’t believe he was able to get them through congress.
To answer the OP’s question- Obama did.
“Obama has signed off on two major tax cuts for middle-class families: the Making Work Pay tax credit that was part of the economic stimulus of 2009 and a temporary reduction in Social Security payroll taxes that went into effect in 2011.
As part of the stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, single workers collected a $400 tax credit, and working couples got $800. The credit didn’t come in the form of a check; it worked out so that most workers had about $400 less in federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks spread out over the entire year.
Most workers received a tax cut under that plan, with the exception of some high earners. The tax cuts phased out for couples who make more than $250,000 or a single person making over $200,000, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.”
The result mirrored what Obama promised he would do on the campaign. Obama pledged tax cuts of $500 for each worker and $1,000 for working couples. We rated the promise a Compromise on our Obameter because the resulting tax cut was a little lower than what Obama wanted.
That tax cut expired at the end of 2011. But Obama won another round of tax cuts for most workers in a December 2010 tax deal with Republicans in Congress. Those tax cuts – a temporary reduction in worker’s payroll taxes, worth about 2 percent of total earnings – expire in 2013. Again, the tax cut didn’t come as a check, but gives workers a little more in their paychecks than they would have otherwise.
Obama also has passed an array of tax cuts for small businesses.
Eight of them were included in the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act (also known as the health care law), and the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (also known as the HIRE Act). Among the cuts were the exclusion of up to 75 percent of capital gains on key small business investments; a tax credit for the cost of health insurance for small business employees and new tax credits for hiring Americans out of work for at least two months.
Another eight cuts came via the Small Business Jobs Act, signed by Obama in September of 2010. These included: adding deductions for business cell phone use; creating a new deduction for health care costs for the self-employed; allowing greater deductions for business start-up expenses; eliminating taxes on all capital gains from key small business investments, and raising the small business expense limit to $500,000.
Three months later, the president signed a tax bill that raised the expense limit to 100 percent of small business new investments until the end of 2011. It also extended the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business investments through the end of 2012. (For more details, see our previous fact-check that provided at least 16 tax cuts to small businesses; we rated it Mostly True.)
To be clear, this doesn’t mean the middle-class and small businesses haven’t seen any tax increases under the Obama administration. We rated his campaign promise that no family making less than $250,000 will see “any form of tax increase” as Promise Broken. Obama has signed off on new taxes on cigarettes and indoor tanning. His health care law includes a tax penalty for people who don’t buy health insurance; that starts in 2014. (It includes hardship exemptions for people who can’t find affordable policies.)
Also, under the health care law, small businesses that have more than 50 employees that don’t offer their employees health insurance could face fines.
Our ruling
Obama has raised some taxes during his presidency, but he’s also pursued broad-based tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses. We particularly give weight here to the tax cuts that were part of the stimulus and the payroll tax holiday, which reduced taxes for broad swaths of the workforce. Some small businesses may have been hit by new taxes that were part of Obama’s health law, but these would depend on the particular circumstances of each business. Also, there were new taxes on cigarettes and indoor tanning.
Obama said he has “cut taxes for those who need it – middle-class families, small businesses.” He has, but he also has raised some taxes. So while his statement is accurate, it lacks that additional context. We rate his claim Mostly True.”
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Stimulus package was a huge tax cut for all income levels.
I’m simply playing devil’s advocate-when was the last time a Republican president handed the Democrat president a stable/improving/thriving economy?
No it wasn’t. It was $400, per person, for the entire year. It changed the amount being withheld from your paycheck. A married couple who both worked ended up paying more at the end of the year because the “stimulus” ended up changing the withholding so that too little was withheld for the actual taxes at the end of the year. And the kicker, the government penalized filers who underpaid their taxes even though it was the government who caused them to underpay by changing their withholding in the first place.
From the link:
TAX CREDITS FOR INDIVIDUALS
People who filed tax returns for either 2007 or 2008 could qualify for “recovery rebates.” In total, the rebates lowered federal taxes by about 5 percent in 2008, reducing the estimated average effective federal tax rate from 19.6 percent to 18.6 percent and cutting federal revenue by nearly $120 billion in fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
Most tax filers received a basic credit of $600—or $1,200 for joint filers—up to their income tax liability before subtraction of child and earned income credits. Tax filers who qualified for less than $300 of the full basic credit ($600 for joint filers) could get $300 ($600 for joint filers) if they had either (1) at least $3,000 in earnings, Social Security benefits, and veteran’s payments or (2) net income tax liability of at least $1 and gross income above specified thresholds.
Those thresholds equaled the sum of the applicable basic standard deduction plus one personal exemption (two personal exemptions for a joint return). That value was $8,750 in 2007 ($17,500 for joint filers and $11,250 for heads of household) and $8,950 in 2008 ($17,900 for joint filers and $11,500 for heads of household).
People who qualified for a basic credit could also receive an extra $300 credit for each child eligible for the regular child credit. The sum of the basic and child credits was reduced by 5 percent of the tax filer’s adjusted gross income over $75,000 ($150,000 for joint filers).
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AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT TAX ACT OF 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act (ARRA) reduced federal taxes by an estimated $287 billion over 10 years. About 80 percent of the tax cuts—$232 billion—were for individuals; smaller cuts subsidized investment in renewable energy and a handful of provisions for businesses. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (2009a) evaluated each of the act’s major provisions, grading them on how large and quick a boost they would give to the economy. Provisions that increased households’ after-tax income quickly—and thus were most likely to increase spending quickly—received the highest grades. But no provision earned an A.
HE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX PATCH
A one-year extension of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) “patch” temporarily raised the AMT exemption. The cost: about $70 billion over 10 years. The patch saved affected taxpayers an estimated average of about $2,400. Under permanent AMT law, roughly 30 million taxpayers would have owed the additional levy (Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center 2009d).
OTHER INDIVIDUAL TAX PROVISIONS
Other major provisions in ARRA replaced the HOPE education credit with the more generous and more refundable American opportunity credit (at a 10-year cost of $14.8 billion), increased the refundability of the child credit ($13.9 billion), boosted the earned income tax credit (EITC—$4.7 billion), and temporarily suspended taxation of the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits ($4.7 billion). All gave taxpayers more money to spend and thus help boost the economy. Two other provisions—the automobile sales tax credit ($1.7 billion) and the homeownership tax credit ($6.6 billion)—subsidized the purchase of cars along with homes for first-time buyers, thus targeting benefits for two industries hit hard by the Great Recession (Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center 2009b, c, e, f, g, i).
TAX RELIEF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE REAUTHORIZATION AND JOB CREATION ACT OF 2010
Faced with the scheduled sunset of all provisions of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the 2009 stimulus act (as well as a number of other tax laws), and unable to agree on permanent changes, Congress temporarily extended many provisions in the (unpunctuated) Tax Relief Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010. The law had diverse effects on the tax code:
It extended all of the 2001 and 2003 individual income tax cuts for two years through 2012.
It extended selected provisions of the 2009 act for two years through 2012, including
the higher EITC phaseout threshold for married couples filing jointly ($5,000 above that for single filers, indexed for inflation);
the 45 percent EITC phase-in rate for families with three or more children;
the $3,000 threshold (unindexed) for refundability of the child tax credit; and
the American Opportunity Tax Credit for higher education.
It set an effective exemption of $5 million and a 35 percent tax rate for the estate tax for 2011 and 2012, and replaced the state death tax credit with a deduction.
It reduced the Social Security (OASDI) tax rate on employees to 4.2 percent for 2011 and the self-employment tax rate by 2 percentage points for 2011. (However, the act did not reduce the amount of self-employment tax that taxpayers could deduct on their income tax returns.)
It raised the AMT exemption to $47,450 for single filers and $72,450 for married couples filing jointly for 2010 and to $48,450 and $74,450, respectively, for 2011.
It extended other expiring tax provisions, including the deduction for state and local general sales taxes, the above-the-line deduction for education expenses, and the educator expense deduction, through 2011.
The temporary reduction in the Social Security tax effectively replaced the Making Work Pay (MWP) credit from the 2009 stimulus. That swap reduced the tax savings for low-income workers—single people with earnings under $20,000 and couples with earnings under $40,000—and provided large new tax breaks for high earners. Recall that single workers with income over $95,000 and couples with income over $190,000 got no MWP credit. In contrast, the cut in the Social Security tax rate saved high earners—those with earnings at or above the $106,800 cap on earnings subject to the tax in 2011—$2,136 in payroll taxes and double that for high-earning couples.
A Tax Policy Center analysis showed that, while about two-thirds of households in the lowest income quintile (income under about $18,000) would have gotten either credit, their average MWP credit would have been twice their payroll tax savings—$371 versus $178. Meanwhile, nearly 90 percent of households in the top quintile (income over about $105,000) got an average payroll tax cut of about $2,250, compared with just 60 percent who would have gotten MWP credits averaging about $650.
So, no, you are wrong.
I’m not wrong. The stimulus “package” was part of the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” and the “Making Work Pay Credit” was a part of that “package” which is what I was talking about.
Your link was for multiple Stimulus Acts. Not the “package” as you stated in your previous post.
As for the stimulus “package”, it didn’t work like Obama said it would. Hence the additional acts after 2009.
Even if you factor in the later acts as part of the “package”, two of your biggest “cuts” were to the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Both of which a majority of taxpayers don’t even qualify for. Big whoop. 
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You suggested there was only one tax cut in the stimulus bill.
That is not correct.
JFK! for sure
For most taxpayers there was only one “cut.” It even says so in your link.
It doesn’t say “most tax payers ONLY got…”
That was one of many cuts.
Net?
$400 per person is not huge, heck Nancy Pelosi even claimed $1000 per person was “peanuts”! And furthermore they were not permanent.
Obama’s social security tax holiday put over $2,000 in my pocket.
