Obama to Announce New Tax Plan for Millionaires

On Monday, President Obama is expected to call for a new minimum tax rate for Americans making more than $1 million a year. The proposal will be called the “Buffett Rule,” after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has complained that rich Americans are not paying their fair share in taxes.

The new rate would affect fewer than 450,000 taxpayers — 0.3 percent of the taxpaying population, and is designed to make future reductions to Medicare and Medicaid more palatable to those who oppose them.

It looks like Obama won’t offer much in the way of details regarding the plan and subsequent revenue increases. Apparently, that work will be left to the special congressional debt reduction committee charged with hacking out a bipartisan budget plan by late November. –ARK

The New York Times:

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

… The millionaires’ rate would affect only 0.3 percent of taxpayers, they said. That would be fewer than 450,000; 144 million returns were filed for 2010.

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