- NEW YORK (Reuters)
-- President Bush's tax cuts have transferred the federal tax burden from
the richest Americans to middle-class families, with one-third of them
benefiting people with the top 1 percent of income, according to a government
report cited in newspapers on Friday.
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- The Congressional Budget Office report, to be released
Friday, is likely to fuel the debate over the cuts between Bush and his
Democratic challenger in November, John Kerry.
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- The report said the top 1 percent, with incomes averaging
$1.2 million per year, will receive an average $78,460 tax cut this year,
and have seen their share of the total tax burden fall roughly 2 percentage
points to 20.1 percent, according to The New York Times.
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- In contrast, households in the middle 20 percent, with
incomes averaging $57,000 per year, will receive an average cut of only
$1,090, the newspaper said, citing the CBO report.
-
- Taxpayers whose incomes range from $51,500 to around
$75,600, saw their share of federal tax payments increase, according to
CBO figures cited by The Washington Post.
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- The calculations, requested by congressional Democrats,
confirm the long-held view by independent tax analysts that the tax cuts,
enacted in 2001 and 2003, have heavily favored the wealthiest taxpayers,
the Times said.
-
- Bush has said the cuts provided crucial support to the
U.S. economy after the Sept. 11 attacks and the three-year decline in U.S.
stocks.
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- But Kerry, who wants to roll back the cuts for households
whose incomes top $200,000 per year, has said the cuts did little for the
economy, and helped cause the federal budget to swing from a more than
$100 billion surplus in 2001 to a projected deficit exceeding $400 billion
this year.
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- The newspapers, citing the CBO report, said about two-thirds
of the benefits from the cuts went to households in the top 20 percent,
with an average income of $203,740.
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- People in the lowest 20 percent of earnings, which averaged
$16,620, saw their effective tax rate fall to 5.2 percent from 6.7 percent,
though their average tax cut was only $250.
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- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5966706
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