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Here's an experiment that you can try at home. The One tells you that he will lower taxes on all but the most successful 5% of income earners. We are assured by The One that only those who make more than $250,000 will see increased taxes. The One tells you that they will reverse the "George Bush" tax cuts. Can these statements be reconciled?

I went to the IRS to see what The One's plans would mean for me. My taxable income in 2007 was around $40,000. According to The One, that puts me in the middle class. Nowhere near the $250,000 that he claims will be the line between those who pay the bills and those who get the handouts. In 2007, that income made for $5,221 in taxes due. If the "Bush Tax Cuts" lapse and we return to the 2001 tax rates, my entire income would be taxed at the 15% rate. Even in 2001, the cutoff for the next bracket was over $43,000 and it has been inflation-adjusted upward since then. My tax bill next year would therefore be $6,000. But that is an increase. Could it possibly be that I am part of the wealthiest 5% that The One has in his crosshairs?

It occurred to me that maybe The One has something against middle class married people and not against middle class single college graduates. So I ran the same numbers for my daughter, a young single recent college graduate. Her salary of $35,000 is largely taxable income. She has no major adjustments to income and she takes the standard deduction and a single exemption. In 2007, her $35,000 salary resulted in a taxable income of $26,250. Her 2007 tax bill: $3,550. If the "Bush Tax Cuts" lapse as The One calls for, her entire income will be taxed at 15%. Her tax bill: $3,938. So, apparently my daughter is part of the wealthiest 5% of Americans as well.

So I got to thinking. Let's assume that faced with the prospect of having to buy health insurance for every employee, my daughter's employer closes up shop and retires to a beach somewhere. Being a college graduate, certainly she could find a minimum wage job to support her surfing hobby. Let's assume she spends all of 2009 flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant earning the federal minimum wage of $6.55 for the first half of 2009, and $7.25 for the second half of 2009. Assuming she works 40 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year evenly split between the first half and second half, she would bring in $6,550 + $7,250, or $13,800. Certainly a burger flipper earning minimum wage is not among the wealthiest 5% of Americans? After all, the statists tell me that the minimum wage is too low to stave off poverty. In 2007, my burger-flipping daughter would have paid $1,683 in taxes. If the "Bush Tax Cuts" are allowed to lapse, her tax bill rises to $2,070.

Who knew that your average burger-flipper is so well off that her wealth needs to be "spread around" to make everything "fair" for the rest of us? For those keeping score: the lawyer's tax bill increased 15%, the college graduate's bill increased 10%, and under The One's tax plan, the burger-flipper's tax bill increased a Whopping (get it?) 23%.

Learn more about this author, Sue A. Sponte.
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