Did you listen to what John Boehner said on Face the Nation?

Did you happen to catch his fuzzy math and questionable logic?

Bob Schieffer pressed John Boehner on what he thought about the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation's report, which stated that only 3% of all small businesses would be affected by allowing the top tax bracket cut to expire.  Boehner responded:

"Well it may be 3%, but it's half of small business income, uh because uh, obviously the top 3% uh have half of the gross income, uh, for those companies that we would term small businesses."

Now, here's the thing.  I'm almost certain he's referring to an often-quoted figure, that approximately 3% of all Americans earn over $200,000, and are responsible for 52% of all taxes paid. (1)  It's either that, or he's using the Tax Policy Center's numbers where the top 2.2% of businesses affected, earn 40.3% of all the income. (2)  That is to say, there are a few people who earn huge sums of money from being a "small business", but the majority of small business owners, in fact, come nowhere near the average $718K income, of those 2.2% who would be affected by the 39.6% rate.

But I keep making the same point over and over to anyone who insists that a tax increase of the upper bracket would devastate job creation: HOW?  Most people running S-Corporations will reduce their cash to zero at the end of the year, to avoid paying taxes on it.  Where do you think Christmas bonuses come from?  Further, since you're subtracting business expenses such as payroll, your leftover income - that which is taxable - does not apply to the income you're paying a new hire.

But for argument's sake, let's say that you're one of those people who actually don't mind getting taxed and letting HUGE amounts of cash sitting in your company's bank account.  To be able to pay someone earning the federal minimum wage for a whole year, based on 40 hours, you'd have to have about $350,000, before the proposed tax difference at the top rate (35% increased to 39.6%) would be large enough to pay for that extra employee.

Of course, the middle-fifth percentile of households earned over $61,000 at the upper limit and $40,000 at the lower limit. (3)  If we examine the lower limit of the middle-fifth percentile, one would need to earn over $875,000 in order for the proposed tax change to effectively prevent you from hiring a new employee at that lower range of the middle-fifth percentile, otherwise known as the middle class.

Now, here's the real stinger.  In response to whether or not he'd vote for a continuation of the tax cuts for the middle class, John Boehner said:

"If that's what we can get done, but I think that's bad policy.  I don't think that's going to help our economy."

Well how about that, huh?  On the one hand, Republicans have been arguing that across the board tax cuts will get the country moving forward, but on the other hand, John Boehner just told us that a middle- and bottom-class tax cut would do diddly-squat!  Translation: John Boehner and Republicans believe that only tax cuts for the rich will get the economy moving forward!

Middle class folks, forget about that tax cut extension; Republicans don't think you'd do much to move the economy forward.

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703876404575200621394266894.html
(2) http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2783&DocTypeID=7
(3) =http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0678.pdf