White House and the Buffett Rule

This week, President Obama re-launched his advocacy for a "Buffett Rule," which maintains that no millionaire should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle-class family. On Tuesday, the National Economic Council issued a white paper justifying the Buffett Rule as a "basic principle of tax fairness." Yet according to the NEC's own white paper, millionaires and billionaires pay nearly twice as much of their income in taxes - both personal income and payroll taxes - than do middle-income taxpayers.