The Center for Tax Justice delivers this important chart (PDF) comparing the Obama administration’s tax proposals and congressional Republicans’ tax proposals relative to the legal baseline established by the Bush administration.
To my way of thinking, the most neglected thing about this is the result you get if you just ignore the Republican plan. Obama, viewed in isolation, not only has a plan to cut taxes it’s a plan that delivers more dollars worth of tax cuts to richer individuals than to the middle class or the working poor. That’s because taxes are levied on marginal income. So if your household has $350,000 in taxable income then even if Obama doesn’t cut the marginal rates on income above $250,000 he’s still cut taxes on that first $250,000. A household earning $100,000 derives much less benefit simply because it has less income to have the tax cut applied to.
