9-15-08, 9:35 am

Nothing is inevitable except death and taxes. But this could change for as many as 101 million working households if Barack Obama wins the November 4th election.

At a recent campaign stop in Florida, Barack Obama said, 'I want to take a pledge. I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase. Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax.'

'John McCain can't make that pledge,' he added.

In fact, as reported recently in the Washington Post, analysis of the tax plans of the two candidates shows that working families earning less than $227,000, or about 95 percent of households, would see sizeable tax relief under Barack Obama's plan, with the most substantial benefits going to the bottom three-fifths of working families. Obama's plan would return somewhere between three and 29 times as much as McCain's to these families, depending on your tax bracket.

By contrast, analysis of after tax incomes under the McCain plan reveals a stark contrast in who would benefit. Mirroring George W. Bush's tax policies exactly, close to 60 percent of McCain's tax breaks will find their way into the pockets of the richest 1 percent of Americans. Under McCain, the middle-class would only see a tiny growth in aftertax income, between .2 and .7 percent. For most working families, McCain's tax break would total from $19 to $319, or just pennies a day.

What the Washington Post does not mention, however, is that whatever benefits many of these households see under McCain's tax plan could be wiped out by a new health care tax he is also proposing. McCain's health care proposal would count employee health care benefits as a part of the household income and impose a new tax on on it, totaling around $3.6 trillion, according to the New York Times.

McCain's top economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, explained the differences between McCain's plan and Obama's away by admitting to one reporter that McCain would impose higher taxes on most working Americans. It's 'arithmetic,' he said.

The Obama campaign also believes that with its plan middle-income families would see lower tax rates than under Ronald Reagan.

New details based on federal government statistics about Obama's plan were released this week. On average, middle-income families will see about $1,000 in relief under Barack Obama.

The new details showed that a married couple earning $90,000 would see an automatic tax cut of $1,000. A single parent earning $40,000 with two kids and childcare expenses could see well over $2,100 in relief, including a $500 deduction, $500 mortgage credit, $1,100 from an expansion of the child care tax credit. A married couple earning $75,000 with two kids, with one in college, could see a return of $3,700 under the Obama plan.

So who do you want to be president when you file your tax returns next year?

--Reach Joel Wendland at