Middle Class | featured news

Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to slash income taxes by 20 percent across the board would boost income for the wealthiest taxpayers while reducing it for the middle class, according to a nonpartisan analysis released on Wednesday.

The Senate narrowly approved legislation on Wednesday to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class but to let them lapse for more affluent households, in a surprise vote intended more to give both parties election-year cover than to produce a new tax law.

Tax cuts that President George W. Bush signed in 2001 and 2003 are playing a major role in the election of 2012. They surface again today as the Democratic-run Senate holds a symbolic debate over President Obama's proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts only for middle-class Americans, not for the wealthy.

There are a number of ways that you can calculate tax rates: average, marginal, including only direct taxes, adding indirect taxes and so on. But the most complete method is to look at taxes paid and then net off against that benefits received.

Senators rejected dueling Democratic and Republican small-business tax cut plans on Thursday, the latest futile effort to break the election-year gridlock that’s consumed Capitol Hill on issues dealing with jobs and the economy... “There is no reason for [Republicans] to have killed this bill other than they are trying to hurt President Obama, small businesses and the middle class,” Reid, who introduced the bill, said at a news conference.

President Obama told Americans on Monday he wants Congress to extend tax cuts for the country's middle class while letting them rise on high income earners. As he attempts to turn voters' attention from the stagnant unemployment numbers — now standing at 8.2% — and limp economic recovery, Obama spoke at the White House as he made an opening campaign pitch for continuing middle class tax relief.

For $235,000, you could indulge in a shiny new Ferrari - or raise a child for 17 years....

Barack Obama is calling on Congress to extend a payroll tax cut for the remainder of the year as a deadline nears for Congress to act or see taxes go up for millions of working Americans.

President Barack Obama kicked off an effort to encourage businesses to keep jobs at home instead of outsourcing them overseas, as he rolled out a new election-year theme on Saturday aimed at courting middle-class voters.

Their views on the economy are relentlessly bleak, but America's so-called Walmart Moms -- the much-coveted working-class female voters whose support can swing an election -- do not blame President Barack Obama and have not given up on him.