For the average middle-class family, taxes today are lower than when Obama took office

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/01/barack-obama/obama-says-taxes-lower-middle-class/

During a Nov. 30, 2011, speech in Scranton, Pa., President Barack Obama urged Congress to extend a payroll tax cut. He used the platform to try to change perceptions about his stance on taxes.

"Now, I know you hear a lot of folks on cable TV claiming that I’m this big tax-and-spend liberal," Obama said. "Next time you hear that, you just remind the people who are saying it that since I’ve taken office, I’ve cut your taxes. … The average middle-class family, your taxes today are lower than when I took office, just remember that. We have cut taxes for small businesses not once, not twice, but 17 times. The average family’s tax burden is among the lowest it’s been in the last 60 years. So the problem is not that we’ve been raising taxes. We’ve actually been trying to give families a break during these tough times."

A couple readers asked us to check this item. One wrote us, "I've seen conservative reactions ranging from, ‘I laughed out loud’ to ‘What a comedian!’"

So we decided to take a look.

We’ve addressed two of these claims in previous items -- the one about small business tax cuts (rating it Mostly True) and the one about the tax burden being the lowest in 60 years (rating it Mostly True). So in this item, we’re only analyzing Obama’s claim that for "the average middle-class family, your taxes today are lower than when I took office."

[...]

To come up with a definition of "middle class," we ignored the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent and focused on the three segments of 20 percent each in the middle of the income distribution. We used the tax data for 2008 and for 2011.

So how do the numbers look? Here’s the summary.

Second-lowest 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $1,715
2011 tax burden: $1,396
Decline of $319

2008 tax rate: 6.7 percent
2011 tax rate: 5.7 percent
Decline of 1 percentage point

Middle 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $6,290
2011 tax burden: $5,535
Decline of $775

2008 tax rate: 13.6 percent
2011 tax rate: 12.4 percent
Decline of 1.2 percentage points

Second-highest 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $13,749
2011 tax burden: $13,078
Decline of $671

2008 tax rate: 17.4 percent
2011 tax rate: 16.5 percent
Decline of 0.9 percentage points

So for each of the three middle quintiles, both the amount of tax paid and the effective tax rate paid declined.


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