"The Crossroads GPS ad simply ignores these very real tax cuts — and points to the health care law instead. To back up the claim that 18 taxes are being raised, the ad cites on screen an analysis by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
But of the $503 billion in taxes listed by the Heritage document, $210 billion falls specifically on individuals making more than $200,000 a year, or couples making over $250,000. And we count another $190 billion that falls only on businesses, including corporations in general, or in particular on health insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers, makers of medical devices and even producers of biofuels.
To be sure, some unknown portion of the taxes that fall directly on individuals would be paid by persons who are below Obama’s promised threshold. For example, a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services went into effect in 2010.
But several taxes would affect only persons with income high enough to claim itemized deductions on their federal income tax returns. For example, $15 billion is to come from limiting deductions for medical expenses to the amount exceeding 10 percent of adjusted gross income (up from 7.5 percent currently). That doesn’t go into effect until 2013, and is the largest tax increase that applies only to individuals. And high-income persons are far more likely to itemize than low-income or middle-income persons, so much if not most of the $15 billion will be paid by those not covered by Obama’s promise.
Another $13 billion would come from limiting the amount of money that can be put into tax-advantaged flexible spending accounts to $2,500 a year. That won’t take effect until 2013, and of course would affect only those with enough income to set aside thousands of dollars in such accounts.
Although not mentioned by the ad, Obama also signed legislation in February 2009 that raised tobacco taxes, which are regressive taxes that fall more heavily on low-income smokers. The bill raised the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 per pack to pay for an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Mandate = Tax Increase?
The Heritage tax figure includes $65 billion that comes from penalties to be paid by larger businesses that choose not to offer coverage for workers, and by individuals who don’t meet the law’s mandate to obtain coverage. The law doesn’t label those penalties a tax, and the president has argued that the individual penalties are “absolutely not a tax increase,” and therefore don’t break his promise. But that’s a matter of opinion. In fact, the administration’s lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that the mandate penalties are taxes, and the justices have yet to decide that legal point. So for now, we’ll leave it to our readers to judge whether those penalties would violate Obama’s promise on taxes.
What we can say is that the $65 billion in penalties would fall mostly on businesses, not individuals. And they don’t take effect until 2014.
Heritage didn’t attempt to break down the $65 billion figure, so we contacted the paper’s author, Curtis Dubay, who told us via email that he drew the figure from a Congressional Budget Office estimate from March 20, 2010. The figure for “Penalty Payments by Employers and Uninsured Individuals” appears in Table 2.
But how much of that is from individuals? We found the answer in Table 4 — $17 billion. Or about $4 billion a year once fully phased in.
That estimate was too low. In fairness to Crossroads GPS and Heritage, we must note that the CBO has since increased its estimate and figures that in 2019 — the last year covered by the original estimate — individuals will pay $7 billion in penalties, not $4 billion. And CBO now figures that would rise to $9 billion in 2022.
But that’s a tiny future increase compared with the tax cuts Obama has already delivered, including an estimated $120 billion in 2012 alone from the 2 percentage point cut in payroll taxes. And so we judge the Crossroads claim that this promise was broken to be mostly false, and its use of a $503 billion figure that is mostly to be paid by businesses and high-income individuals to be simply dishonest.
Footnote: We are still researching the other claims in this ad and will address them at a later time in a separate posting."
FactCheck.org : A Bogus Tax Attack Against Obama
