Bush Tax Cuts

GOP: Bechtel, PricewaterhouseCoopers And Other 'Small Businesses' Will See Tax Hike (CHARTS)

Brian Beutler | September 20, 2010, 11:28AM

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)

As the fight over the expiring Bush tax cuts drags on, Democrats and Republicans are vying for public support by citing figures about business tax rates. According to President Obama and the Democrats, 97 percent of small businesses will see their tax rates remain the same. Republican counter that the remaining three percent of small businesses -- about 750,000 of them -- constitute half of all small-business income. There's only one way both of those statements can be true: Many of those 750,000 small businesses aren't small at all. Some, like Bechtel Corporation, are positively enormous.

The Democratic and Republican figures come from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation. But numerous think tanks and government organizations have examined the data and come to similar conclusions: First, that letting the Bush tax cuts on the top two brackets of "small-business" income would impact a tiny percentage of those businesses; and second, that many of the "small businesses" that would be impacted are actually giant companies -- which explains why such a tiny fraction of them can account for half of small business income.

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