Lies, Damn Lies, and Campaign Tax Promises

Barack Obama on the campaign trail: "If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up. If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down."

Sounds good, right? Except that according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this is the opposite of true:

Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes—in 2019 alone—due to healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official scorekeeper. 

The new law raises $15.2 billion over 10 years by limiting the medical expense deduction, a provision widely used by taxpayers who either have a serious illness or are older.

Taxpayers can currently deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income. Starting in 2013, most taxpayers will only be able to deduct expenses greater than 10 percent of AGI. Older taxpayers are hit by this threshold increase in 2017.

Once the law is fully implemented in 2019, the JCT estimates the deduction limitation will affect 14.8 million taxpayers — 14.7 million of them will earn less than $200,000 a year. These taxpayers are single and joint filers, as well as heads of households.

My take on why the Affordable Care Act is a fiscal time bomb here.