Nearly 90 percent of Americans would face higher taxes next year if Congress permits the nation to hurtle over the “fiscal cliff,†the year-end precipice of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatens to throw the nation back into recession.
A study published Monday by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center finds that taxes would go up by a collective $536 billion next year, or about $3,500 per household, reducing after-tax income by about 6.2 percent.
For most taxpayers, the bulk of the increase would be triggered by the scheduled expiration of tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 during the George W. Bush administration. The expiration of President Obama’s payroll tax holiday, which shaves 2 percentage points off payments to Social Security, comes in a close second.
But the lowest earners would be hardest hit by the expiration of tax breaks enacted as part of Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package, the study found. Those losses would include an expansion of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit for working families, as well as a $2,500 credit for college tuition, which would shrink to $1,800 and be available for only two years instead of the current four.
New taxes in Obama’s health-care initiative, levies that are set to take effect for the first time, such as a new 3.8 percent tax on capital gains for high-income households will bring the hit up to $412 for low income earners, to $2,000 per middle class household to $120,000 per household for the so called top 1%.
It was recently calculated that confiscation of all of the income (100%) from the top 1% of earners would only run the government for about a month.
