Uncovered: The 15 Tax Hikes Hidden in Obama’s New Budget | The Blaze

Uncovered: The 15 Tax Hikes Hidden in Obama’s New Budget | The Blaze

Over the last two years, the president has regularly touted his fight to lower taxes for Americans. In fact, his latest budget proposal offered up today is being billed as a package of tough cuts. But buried within the budget’s rhetoric and numerous pages are actually a healthy amount of increases — tax increases, that is. 15 of them.

The folks over at Business Insider note “the budget contains as much as $1.5 trillion in hikes over ten years,” thanks to some diligent sleuthing by the group Americans for Tax Reform.

Here are the hidden increases:

• Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%. This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike

• Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%

• Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million. This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike

• Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate. This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses. A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more. This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike

• New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years

• New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years

• New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years

• Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years

• Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years

• Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income. This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years

• A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement. This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years

• Increasing tax penalties, information reporting, and IRS information sharing. This is a ten-year tax hike of $20 billion.