qualified. Ordinary dividends are currently taxed as regular (earned) income. Qualified dividends are taxed at the same rate as long term capital gains. Obama never campaigned on increasing the dividend rate to ordinary income rate. What he did campaign on was raising the rate for capital gains and dividends to 20%. He fulfilled that promise in 2012. In fact, the NYT specifically states in this article that dividend income was Obama's one exception to his promise to end all Bush era tax cuts.
In past years, Mr. Obama had proposed to raise the tax rate on dividends only slightly, to 20 percent from 15 percent. Retaining a tax preference for dividends income was the one exception to his 2008 campaign proposal, which have been blocked by Congress, to end all Bush-era tax cuts for those with more than $250,000 income.
The 2012 budget blueprint included raising rates of qualified dividends to the rate of ordinary income, but that was AGAINST his campaign promises. All he promised was that the qualified dividends and cap gains would be taxed at the higher 20% instead of 15%, and he did. He tried to implement that in his first term, but in a compromise deal that allowed a one year extension on unemployment benefits, extension of the 2% SS tax credit and passage of the jobs bill.
You also forget to mention the significant increased to earned income in the form of medicare taxes of 3.9% on the higher income taxpayers. You also don't mention the return of the top rate of 39%. You forget to mention a lot of things and then act as if other Democrats agree with you. You claim that Democrats have screwed "us" over is highly offensive. Just to make clear, you don't speak for those Democrats who voted based on the Obama platform. He made clear what he wanted to do regarding tax rates on cap gains and did it. I haven't been screwed over by Democrats, please speak for yourself and try to be accurate when you do.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/1/increase-the-capital-gains-and-dividends-taxes-for/http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/obama-proposes-taxing-wealthiest-dividends/
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch08.html#en_US_2013_publink1000171583
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