Ryan/Romney Want To Raise Your Taxes

In addition to his budget (which abolished Medicare), Paul Ryan has also come up with some tax cuts -- which have been approved by Willard Romney, and are very similar to Romney's own proposed tax cuts). The chart above, from the Joint Economic Committee, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows what these cuts proposed by Ryan would look like in 2015. It shows that the actual cuts in the tax rate would cover all five quintiles of the population (although the top quintile, and the top 1%, would receive much larger cuts than the bottom 80% of Americans).

The Ryan/Romney ticket have been saying they would cut taxes for everyone, and that chart makes it look like that statement might be true. Unfortunately, that is only half of the story. If those cuts were made and nothing else done to replace the tax revenue lost by them, the budget deficit and national debt would balloon so much it would make the current deficit and debt look insignificant by comparison -- and the Ryan/Romney tickets knows that.

So to make up for some of the lost revenue (but not all of it), they have proposed to eliminate some tax deductions -- such as deductions for state and local taxes, mortgage interest, and charitable contributions. They would also tax employer-provided health insurance and money put into a 401k. Once this is done the picture changes significantly, and completely overrides any rate cut for the working and middle class earners (even the upper middle class).

In fact, anyone not in the top 10% of earners will actually see their taxes go up under the Ryan/Romney plan. For instance, those making between $100,000 and $200,000 would pay an average of $2,681 more in taxes. Those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would pay an average of $1,358 more in taxes, and those making under $50,000 would also see their tax liability rise. But those making between $500,000  and $1,000,000 a year would see their taxes go down by an average of $37,887, and those making more than $1,000,000 a year would save hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.

In the final analysis, taxes would be raised for everyone making less than $200,000 a year (more than 90% of Americans), while only the rich would get a real tax cut, and the super-rich would benefit most of all. Americans need to understand this as they go to the polls in November. A vote for the Ryan/Romney ticket is a vote for higher taxes for almost all Americans. This is just one more example of how the Republicans favor the rich over other Americans, and just one more reason to vote them out of office.