Obama Will Focus on Wealth Inequality—Not Just Income
Under current tax laws, America’s highest earners pay income tax of 39.6 percent. Capital-gains taxes, even after Obama’s shift, cannot exceed 23.8 percent. The Center for American Progress characterizes this difference as a government subsidy for investment income, and an expensive one at that. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this subsidy amounts to $1.34 trillion over the next ten years. Sixty-eight percent of that went to the top one percent. Given this situation, it comes as no surprise that the country’s 400 top earners, or 0.0003 percent of the taxpaying population, earned 12 percent of capital gains benefitting from lower rates.
More: State of the Union: Obama Places Capital Gains Taxes at Top of Agenda - the Atlantic