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progree
progree's Journal
progree's Journal
January 13, 2016
A DU thread on this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027496324
He also mentions a 17 million drop in the number of uninsured Americans between 2012 and the first half of 2015.
Anyway, I think a mention of this belongs in the Obama group. So many people are completely and totally unaware that he raised the top bracket marginal tax rate from 35% to 39.6% (back to the old Clinton rate). Add in the 0.9% Medicare surcharge on the top 2 tax brackets (a feature of the ACA legislation), and the top marginal tax rate actually rose to 40.5% (on earned income).
As for capital gains -- when the ACA's 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) on the top 2 brackets is included, the actual long term capital gains tax rate for the top tax bracket (which is about where the top 1 percentile begins), is 23.8%, even higher than under Clinton, and 23.8/15.0 = 1.59 times higher than under Bush.
Details: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6503186
You will sometimes encounter trolls posting on DU that Obama kept 82% of the Bush tax cuts -- implying he's almost as bad as Bush. What said trolls leave out is one big important detail - that he kept the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98%, while raising taxes on the top 2%.
Krugman: Obama rolled back the Bush and Reagan tax cuts on the top 1%
According to the new tables ( https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Statistical-Tables-by-Tax-Rate-and-Income-Percentile ), the average income tax rate for 99 percent of Americans barely changed from 2012 to 2013, but the tax rate for the top 1 percent rose by more than four percentage points. The tax rise was even bigger for very high incomes: 6.5 percentage points for the top 0.01 percent.
These numbers aren’t enough to give us a full picture of taxes at the top, which requires taking account of other taxes, especially taxes on corporate profits that indirectly affect the income of stockholders. But the available numbers are consistent with Congressional Budget Office projections of the effects of the 2013 tax increases (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/presidents-and-the-economy/ ) — projections which said that the effective federal tax rate on the 1 percent would rise roughly back to its pre-Reagan level. No, really: for top incomes, Mr. Obama has effectively rolled back not just the Bush tax cuts but Ronald Reagan’s as well.
Those higher rates on the 1 percent correspond to about $70 billion a year in revenue. This happens to be in the same ballpark as both food stamps and budget office estimates of this year’s net outlays on Obamacare. So we’re not talking about something trivial.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/elections-have-consequences.html?_r=1
These numbers aren’t enough to give us a full picture of taxes at the top, which requires taking account of other taxes, especially taxes on corporate profits that indirectly affect the income of stockholders. But the available numbers are consistent with Congressional Budget Office projections of the effects of the 2013 tax increases (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/presidents-and-the-economy/ ) — projections which said that the effective federal tax rate on the 1 percent would rise roughly back to its pre-Reagan level. No, really: for top incomes, Mr. Obama has effectively rolled back not just the Bush tax cuts but Ronald Reagan’s as well.
Those higher rates on the 1 percent correspond to about $70 billion a year in revenue. This happens to be in the same ballpark as both food stamps and budget office estimates of this year’s net outlays on Obamacare. So we’re not talking about something trivial.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/elections-have-consequences.html?_r=1
A DU thread on this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027496324
He also mentions a 17 million drop in the number of uninsured Americans between 2012 and the first half of 2015.
Anyway, I think a mention of this belongs in the Obama group. So many people are completely and totally unaware that he raised the top bracket marginal tax rate from 35% to 39.6% (back to the old Clinton rate). Add in the 0.9% Medicare surcharge on the top 2 tax brackets (a feature of the ACA legislation), and the top marginal tax rate actually rose to 40.5% (on earned income).
As for capital gains -- when the ACA's 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) on the top 2 brackets is included, the actual long term capital gains tax rate for the top tax bracket (which is about where the top 1 percentile begins), is 23.8%, even higher than under Clinton, and 23.8/15.0 = 1.59 times higher than under Bush.
Details: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6503186
You will sometimes encounter trolls posting on DU that Obama kept 82% of the Bush tax cuts -- implying he's almost as bad as Bush. What said trolls leave out is one big important detail - that he kept the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98%, while raising taxes on the top 2%.
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