Jobs & The Economy: Putting America Back to Work
“The American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away. But we can’t stop there. We have to … start building an economy that lasts into the future — an economy that creates good, middle-class jobs that pay well and offer security… If we want [companies] to start here and stay here and hire here, we have to be able to out-build and out-educate and out-innovate every other country on Earth.”
Tax Relief for Middle-Class Families and Small Businesses
Tax Relief for Middle-Class Families
President Obama has cut taxes for middle class families every year he has been in office, and federal taxes for middle class families are currently at nearly their lowest levels in decades.
A typical middle class family has gotten a tax cut of $3,600 over the last four years – 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 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.
• Federal income taxes on middle‐income families are now at nearly their lowest level (as a share of income) since the Eisenhower Administration, and total federal taxes on middle class families also remain at nearly the lowest levels in decades.
15 million working families with 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 about 5 million 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 lifted 1.6 million people in working‐poor families out of poverty in 2010.
Starting in 2014, about 18 million individuals and families will get tax credits for health insurance coverage averaging about $4,000 apiece, as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
• Over the next ten years, the Affordable Care Act will provide middle class individuals and families with almost $700 billion in tax credits to help pay for health insurance coverage.
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
