The rest of Obama’s tax plan.

Politicians are (purposely) vague, but numbers are a bit more clear. According to Alex Brill and Alan Viard, the specifics of Barack Obama’s tax plan is quite lacking compared to his promise not to tax anyone whose joint annual income is less than $250,000. Obama’s plan instead will punish those making as little as $31,000 through his aggressive increase on the marginal tax rate (the tax that applied to the last dollar you earned).

As the chart shows, Obama’s give-and-take tax policy results in marginal tax rates of 34 percent to 39 percent in the $31,000 to $45,000 income range for this family. That’s an increase of 13 percentage points or more from the current rates.

What accounts for the higher rates? First, Obama expands the maximum child and dependent care credit for families with one young child from $1,050 to $1,500 and phases down the credit over a longer income range, from $30,000 to $58,000. Throughout this income range, the credit is phasing out at a rate of $30 per $1,000 of income, thus raising the effective tax rate by 3 percentage points. Obama also makes certain credits refundable, which introduces a tax penalty of 10 percent or 15 percent, depending on the income bracket.

While Obama has publicly embraced a tax rate of 40 percent for couples earning over $350,000, his tax policies would result in a staggering 45 percent effective marginal rate in the $110,000 to $120,000 income range for this family. That is 11 percentage points higher than under current law.

So, far from being “rich,” if you and wifey make $55k each, you can count on your marginal tax rate skyrocketing.

$55,000 each (or $110,000 jointly), by the way, puts you in the top 10 percent on income earners. Liberals love to toss around terms like “rich,” “middle-class” or “top [insert percent here]” without ever defining those terms in dollar amounts because most people would be shocked to learn that when someone is calling for higher taxes on the rich that person is talking about them.

Today’s modern middle class is “rich” to Barack Obama and Democrats on Capital Hill.