The Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2010

[babsbunny]

http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0411

On December 2nd, the House passed the Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2010 (HR 6467) to extend middle-class tax cuts by a vote of 234-188. These tax cuts are expiring at the end of this year because when Republicans passed them 10 years ago, they sunsetted them to hide their true cost to the deficit. The bill today cuts taxes for 97% of American families and small businesses (saving about $1,000 per year for a typical middle-class family each year):

For all families making less than $250,000 a year, the bill permanently extends the 2001/2003 tax cuts, including current tax rates, marriage penalty relief (including EITC), capital gains and dividends rates, and $1,000 child tax credit (for earnings above $3,000). The bill also protects more than 25 million taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax by extending the AMT patch through 2011 and permanently extends small business expensing.

Congressional Republicans have been holding these middle class tax cuts hostage, insisting on a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires which economists say do little to create jobs in America (and the Bush record of shrinking the private sector is proof). House Democrats are letting the deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest 3% expire and returning the top tax rates to what they were in the 1990s—an economic boom time for America.