Syndicate Qur'an Project:
Blogger ATOM
A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry claiming it proves that "Over the last four years, the burden of taxes has shifted from the wealthy to the middle class."
Those are politically motivated lies that distort the findings of the report. Here's the truth.
The report also shows that Bush's tax cuts have been "progressive" — that is, they have shifted the share of the overall federal income tax burden toward the wealthy and away from lower-income earners. Without the Bush tax cuts, the highest-earning 20 percent of households this year would have paid 78.4 percent of all federal income taxes. Now, after the Bush tax cutes, their share of the burden has risen to 82.1 percent. Every other group now pays a smaller share of the total income tax burden.
The report also shows that Bush managed to craft a tax reduction package that even benefits the lowest-earning taxpayers who already pay what amount to negative income taxes. That's right, thanks to various refundable tax credits, before the Bush tax cuts the lowest-earning 20 percent of income earners not only paid no income taxes — on average they received money from the Internal Revenue Service. Now that’s compassionate.
