Obama and Taxes

It has become increasingly clear that the Republican leaders have a very low opinion of the average voter’s intelligence. They call for offshore and ANWR oil drilling when they know very well that such drilling would do nothing to lower the cost of fuel. Now, in a group of advertisements for John McCain, they are pressing the argument that Barack Obama, if elected president, would raise taxes on everybody. Their commercials try to scare the public by claiming that such taxes would mean disaster for the average household. Just as with the claims about oil drilling, they know that their claims are false, but they go on lying to the public anyway.

Barack Obama is not going to raise taxes on middle or lower income Americans. On the contrary, he wants to provide a tax credit to all Americans who earn less than $250,000 per year. The credit would be $500 for individuals and $1000 for families. The only people whose taxes would rise under Obama would be people earning over $250,000 per year. For these people, Obama would let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 and would raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

There are several other things that Obama would do to help the low and middle income taxpayers. He would create a new 10 percent universal mortgage interest credit that could be used by people who do not itemize their tax deductions. The current mortgage interest deduction excludes nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not itemize their taxes. Obama would ensure that anyone with a mortgage, not just the well-off, could take advantage of this tax incentive for home ownership. This credit would benefit an additional 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year.

Obama would eliminate income taxes for senior citizens earning less than $50,000 per year.

Obama would simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans could do their taxes in less than 5 minutes

Obama would eliminate special interest loopholes and tax breaks for corporations and other businesses and crack down on international tax havens. Obama said that we have over $1 trillion worth of loopholes in the corporate tax code. According to a report released recently by the Government Accountability Office, two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005. Obama would rectify that and require corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Moreover, he would stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and he would save tax breaks for companies that keep jobs right here in America.

Obama would end American involvement in the dirty war in Iraq. The war is costing us $144 billion a year, and well over $600 billion so far. That money could be used to help balance the budget and pay for better health care and benefits for war veterans.

Unlike Obama, McCain wants to make the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy permanent. An analysis of both campaigns’ proposals by the Washington-based, nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that for people with annual incomes above $603,000, Obama would raise taxes by more than $115,000 a year, while McCain would cut them by $45,000.

McCain has shown that he would rather tax middle-class Americans than wealthy oil companies. He opposes taxing the gigantic windfall profits currently being earned by the oil companies. Such taxes would constitute an incentive for the oil companies to invest in alternative energy projects, refinery expansion, promotion of energy efficiency, and conservation.

The centerpiece of McCain’s tax plan is two huge tax cuts for Ameri­can corporations. As president, McCain would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 per­cent to 25 percent and allow corporations to immediately deduct all of their invest­ments in equipment and technology. According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reducing the corporate tax rate alone would deliver a $3.8 billion tax cut to the five largest American oil companies. Apparently McCain does not feel that the immense profits being earned by oil companies are sufficient. He wants to hand them another $3.8 billion a year.

The old Republican lie about “tax-and-spend-Democrats” never dies. After eight years in which the Republicans took our country from a budget surplus to the largest deficits in history, after eight years of monstrous pork-engorged and earmark-stuffed budgets by greedy Republican congresses, it ill behooves the Republicans to accuse Barack Obama of being a tax-and-spend Democrat.