Todd Young and Indiana GOP both claim the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) would raise taxes “on anyone making less than $400,000”
New York Magazine: “Republicans Say Biden’s Plan Taxes the Middle Class. That’s False. Biden’s plan fulfills his campaign promise”
INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Democratic Party, the organization that advocates for the future of Indiana and its families, today criticized Todd Young and the Indiana Republican Party for spreading misinformation about the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its impact on Indiana’s future. In a series of press releases and tweets, Young and the Indiana GOP claimed the IRA would increase taxes on Hoosiers across the state. The Party cited the Joint Committee on Taxation in their attack, but according to independent analysis, “The JCT report simply does not find this at all.”
Unfortunately, Todd Young’s opposition to the IRA is just another moment where the Senator put the Indiana GOP’s extremist agenda ahead of the state’s future. Todd Young last week chose to block veterans from life-saving health care to make a political point in Congress. Hoosiers want a better future for their families, and the Indiana GOP only delivers extremism.
The Inflation Reduction Act would help combat global inflation and lower the cost of goods for Hoosier families. It would lower prescription drug costs, lower health insurance costs to $800 a year under the Affordable Care Act, create good-paying jobs, and finally allow the United States to fight climate change. The best part: no person or family making under $400,000 would see their taxes increase. The IRA is legislation Hoosiers have been wanting from politicians, because it would create a better future for their families.
Unfortunately, Todd Young and the Indiana Republican Party are proving their months-long critiques on inflation were more about partisan elections and less about solving a kitchen-table issue.
SHOT: Todd Young and Indiana GOP both claim the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) would raise taxes “on anyone making less than $400,000”
Indiana GOP: “Joe Biden pledged not to support raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, but the “Bidenflation Reduction Act” will do exactly that to millions of Americans, including Hoosiers at every income level.”
Todd Young: “Over 60 times during their campaign and since taking office, President Biden and Vice President Harris pledged not to raise a single penny in taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.”
“Fast forward to now and the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the Democrats’ reckless tax and spend bill will raise billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans in nearly every income bracket, even those making less than $10,000 a year.”
CHASER: Republicans Say Biden’s Plan Taxes the Middle Class. That’s False. Biden’s plan fulfills his campaign promise
New York Magazine: Republicans Say Biden’s Plan Taxes the Middle Class. That’s False. Biden’s plan fulfills his campaign promise
Over the weekend, a congressional tax committee analyzed a portion of the tax Inflation Reduction Act Senator Joe Manchin struck with Senator Chuck Schumer and President Biden. Republicans inaccurately claimed the report shows the plan would increase taxes on the middle class. The plan in fact raises taxes only on corporations with an income over $1 billion. It does not raise taxes on individual taxpayers at all.
This false claim immediately began to spread through conservative media. The study, by the Joint Committee on Taxation, “finds that average tax rates will increase for nearly every income category in 2023 under the bill,” asserts The Wall Street Journal editorial page. “This gives the lie to Democratic claims that no one earning under $400,000 will pay more taxes under the bill, a promise Mr. Biden also made in his campaign. The reality is that the Schumer-Manchin bill is a tax increase on nearly every American.”
The JCT report simply does not find this at all. The false assertion that Manchin’s deal raises taxes on the middle class combines a series of fallacies.
First, the study, performed at the behest of Senate Republicans, analyzes only a portion of the bill. It omits all the benefits from the tax credits for health care, green energy, and lower prescription drug savings. I will explain the importance of this omission in a bit.
Second, and far more importantly, the partial analysis does not actually find that the plan increases taxes on the middle class. It is an analysis of the burden of a proposal, which would establish a 15 percent minimum corporate income tax on firms with income over $1 billion.
The complication that enters the picture is that the JCT, like other economic modelers, tries to project how the burden of a tax increase is borne. The agency used to assume that corporate tax increases are borne entirely by shareholders in the firms that pay the tax. In 2013, the agency changed its modeling assumptions and now assumes that corporate tax increases are not borne entirely by shareholders. Instead, firms respond to tax increases in part by reducing wages for their employees and reducing investment, which ultimately leads to slightly lower wages.
These assumptions are projections. It is still a subject of significant dispute, and nobody believes the assumptions can be treated as anything more than an educated guess. […]
Republicans are perfectly free to use these projections to argue that the Democratic plan will hurt the middle class. But to insist that it will raise taxes on the middle class is simply false.
CNN: Top economists say Democrats’ health care and climate package will put ‘downward pressure on inflation’
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