Today the Bureau of Economic Analysis released personal income and outlays for September 2011. Personal income increased $17.3 billion, or 0.1 percent, and disposable personal income increased $12.9 billion, or 0.1 percent. That number is helped by the tax cuts in the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 that cut social security withholding by 2 percentage points and that resulted in about $1000 per family per year in increased income.

Knowing that increasing personal income is vital to improving our economy, the President has proposed increasing this tax cut in his American Jobs Act. Under his proposal, the payroll tax cut would be extended to firms by cutting in half their payroll tax on the first $5 million in payroll. Next year, instead of paying 6.2 percent on their payroll expenses, firms would pay only 3.1 percent. The President’s plan would provide tax cuts for all firms, with focused relief on the 98% with less than $5 million in payroll.

For example, a construction firm with 50 workers earning an average of $50,000 a year – for a total payroll of $2.5 million – would receive a payroll tax cut of 3.1% of its total payroll, or about $80,000. The firm’s workers would receive an average tax cut of about $1,500 a year from the employee side payroll tax cut in the President’s plan.

Learn more about the President’s proposed American Jobs Act on the White House website.