The Poor, Middle Class | featured news

Mitt Romney stepped up his efforts to repair the damage from his “47 percent” comments, trying to reassure voters that he cares about the poor and middle class.

America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000. Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.

Forbes magazine's recent cover story "When Work Doesn't Pay For the Middle Class" illustrates many of the issues the middle class faces regarding the unintended interactions between work, marriage and taxes. We'd also like to point out that these unintended interactions pose serious problems for an often overlooked segment of our society--the working poor.