Jobs & The Economy: Putting America Back to Work
“It is our generation’s task, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth —
a rising, thriving middle class,”
Tax Relief for Middle-Class Families and Small Businesses
Tax Relief for Middle-Class Families
President Obama has cut taxes for middle class families, and under this Administration, federal taxes for middle class families have been close to their lowest levels in decades.
A typical middle class family received a tax cut of $3,600 over President Obama’s first term – more if they were putting a child through college.
• President Obama's Making Work Pay credit provided 95 percent of working families a tax cut of $400 per person or $800 per couple in 2009 and 2010.
• The President's payroll tax cut provided 160 million workers a 2 percent reduction in payroll taxes, cutting taxes for a typical family earning $50,000 a year by $1,000 -- or $40 per paycheck -- in 2011 and 2012.
• Families putting a child through college can receive as much as $10,000 of help over four years from the President’s American Opportunity Tax Credit, the equivalent of nearly a 30 percent discount on tuition at a typical state university. For many families, the American Opportunity Tax Credit provides thousands of dollars more help with college expenses than they could have received from pre‐existing tax credits.
16 million working families with 30 million children benefit from the President’s improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.
• Nearly 12 million working families with children receive larger Child Tax Credits due to the President’s improvements, including millions of working families that now get help from the credit and previously could not benefit from it at all.
• Together, the Child Tax Credit improvements and enhancements to the Earned Income Tax Credit for couples and larger families directly lifted 1.4 million people in working‐poor families out of poverty in 2012.
Millions of Americans are receiving tax credits to lower the cost of their health insurance premiums.
• In the first year the tax credits were available, they reduced premiums by an average of 76 percent.
Tax Relief for Small Businesses
President Obama firmly believes that entrepreneurs and small businesses are engines of economic growth, and that their investments and innovation have been at the forefront of our economic recovery. That’s why he and his Administration have focused on strengthening small businesses by signing into law 18 tax cuts for small businesses, ranging from 100% expensing to the small business health tax credit, to the temporary tax exclusion of capital gains from key small business investments.
Each of the following pieces of legislation established or extended tax cuts for small businesses:
• American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Act
• Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act
• Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act
• Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act