Posts tagged 2009

Interesting find here while digging around at cnn.com.

 

The claim: To hear Obama tell it, McCain isn’t proposing “one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans.”

The Obama campaign says it bases that number on McCain’s proposal to increase the exemption tax filers take for dependents, and adds that it is the “only middle-class tax cut” the Republican nominee has offered.

The top line: It depends on what you mean by tax relief and what you mean by “only.” But Obama’s claim isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, keeping in mind that projections about tax effects are not carved in stone.

The facts: McCain has made several tax proposals. One of them is the dependent exemption increase.

Obama gets to his “more than 100 million” charge primarily from an analysis that two Harvard researchers did for the campaign. They examined 2004 tax return data from the IRS and estimated that 101 million tax returns would not benefit from the increase to the exemption in 2009. That represents more than 140 million people. The Obama campaign claims that number is actually low because the data did not include non-filers.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer