Clarification

In reference to my posts here and then here, a few people emailed to make the point that seniors with income of $41,000 could very plausibly have dividend and capital gains income totaling $1,000 per year. I comletely agree. However, the numbers in the right panel of the NYT’s figure, titled “Married, two children under 17”, are not relevant for seniors.

For seniors, the more relevant number is the $211 in the middle panel. This total savings of $211 is very close to just the savings due to reducing the tax rate on $1,000 of dividend and capital gains income from 28% to 5%! What does that mean? Well without the $1,000 assumption, Deloitte and Touche–and thus the NYT–would have had to report a benefit of roughly zero for the “Single, no children” category. (If the stock income tax rate for this bracket is only being cut from 28% to 15%, then the savings for singles without stock income would be $81).

AB