TAXES - BLAME BUSH

The Bush Tax Cut Myth

Having personally pocketed more than $30,000 in new tax breaks, President Bush today will celebrate April 15 by touting his tax policy's effect on the economy. Bush will visit Des Moines, Iowa – a city that has seen its unemployed population double since the President took office. His speech will most likely ignore the fact that his latest tax cut gave less than $100 to 87% of Iowans, excluded more than 125,000 Iowa kids from the child tax credit, while doing nothing to deal with the fact that Iowa has seen 27,000 more workers added to its unemployment roster. While the White House continues to claim that "every American who pays taxes has benefited from the president's tax relief," two new polls show that Americans are not fooled by this deceptive rhetoric, and understand that most of the tax benefits went to a small wealthy sliver of the population. A new Money Magazine poll shows "60% of Americans said the Bush tax cut did not personally help them" while an AP poll shows that "49% of Americans said their overall tax burden — including federal, state and local taxes — had gone up" since President Bush took office. Just 13% said their taxes had gone down. Of course, there was a select group of people who did benefit: a new Public Campaign study shows how Bush campaign donors are reaping a windfall.

POLL NUMBERS REFLECT TAX REALITY: The new poll numbers are not surprising: USA Today reports the tiny tax cuts middle-class families received from Bush's tax bills are even smaller than promised. Additionally, the White House has left out more than 20 million children (including more than 250,000 children of U.S. service men/women) from the full child tax credit, and has refused to push Congress to expand it. Meanwhile, middle-class families are now being forced to deal with increased state/local taxes and higher fees needed to make up for the deficits the Bush tax cuts created. And while President Bush continues to parrot the "tax cuts create jobs" line – the Gadflyer's Paul Waldman points out just how inefficient the White House's tax cuts have been as a job creator: even if the economy added 300,000 jobs a month for the rest of the year, each job created would have cost U.S. taxpayers $871,046 in tax cuts. For more on the tax cut debate, see American Progress's new Tax Day report.

CORPORATE SHILLS COMPLAIN, WHILE MIDDLE-CLASS GETS STIFFED: Recent studies have confirmed that the corporate tax rate has declined sharply, with more than 60% of U.S. companies paying no taxes at all. These companies' taxes went down at the same time their profits expanded. But that hasn't stopped corporations from perpetuating a myth that they are overtaxed: Forbes Magazine today published an article complaining about how U.S. corporations are supposedly being ravaged by high tax rates. While the official numbers at first glance appear shocking, a tax consultant admits the truth: "Corporations usually pay a smaller amount than they report on the balance sheet" because of other loopholes. And while the IRS has increased its auditing of ordinary citizens, corporate tax audits have plummeted. And as the St. Petersburg Times editorial board notes, "for most corporations, April 15 is just another day they don't have to worry about paying taxes...The message is clear: Corporations have been allowed, even encouraged, to dodge their tax responsibility." Read this American Progress report on the corporate tax void.

WHITE HOUSE ENCOURAGES CORPORATE TAX EVASION: The Christian Science Monitor notes one reason for falling corporate tax revenues is so-called "corporate inversions" – the euphemism for a U.S. company acquiring a mailing address in a tax haven country like Bermuda to avoid all U.S. taxes. ABC News reported on 7/12/02 that while President Bush "says the Bermuda loophole should be closed, he has yet to support any of the bills that would do so." In fact, in 2002 the White House worked to strip out House-passed provisions barring federal contracts from going to the scores of U.S. companies that have used the scheme to avoid paying their fair share. The Monitor sums up the situation by noting that the growing "burden on middle-income people and dearth of corporate receipts raise issues of fairness."

COUNTRY CLUB MILLIONAIRES COMPLAIN ABOUT HARDSHIPS: The data is clear: the top 1% of Americans – people who make an average of $1 million a year – will receive more than $1 trillion in total tax breaks from the Bush tax cuts. Every year, each of these millionaires will get more than $50,000 in new tax cuts. But that hasn't stopped these super-wealthy individuals from complaining: In Denver this evening, "some of the city's wealthiest residents will celebrate by gathering at the Denver Country Club and singing songs about how poor they are now that they've paid the IRS."

From Center for American Progress but they are offline now.