Biden's Spending Bill: New Survey Doubts POTUS' Vow Americans Earning Under $400K Won't See Tax Hike

Provisions included in a draft version of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" plan may run counter to his pledge that tax hikes will only affect Americans earning $400,000 or more if the package is implemented, a new study has claimed.

The survey conducted by the Washington-based think tank Tax Policy Centre argued that "taking into account all major tax provisions, roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022".

The social spending plan would also reduce "2022 taxes on average for every income group except those in the top 1 percent. The highest-income households would face roughly the same increase in direct taxes in 2022 as they would with all major provisions", according to the analysis.

Additionally, the document found that a reconciliation bill provision that would raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap "would provide almost no benefit for middle-income households" while bringing a profit to wealthy Americans.

"It would reduce their 2021 taxes by an average of only $20. Even those making between $175,000 and $250,000 would get a tax cut of just over $400 or about 0.2 percent of after-tax income. By contrast, the higher SALT cap would boost after-tax incomes by 1.2 percent for those making between about $370,000 and $870,000 (the 95th to 99th percentile)", the survey asserted.

The analysis comes more than a month after Biden touted the social spending plan along with a separate bipartisan infrastructure bill during a speech in Michigan, insisting that "best of all, the cost of these bills, in terms of adding to the deficit, is zero".

"And I made a commitment when I wrote these when I was running: No one making under $400,000 a year will see a penny in their taxes go up", POTUS said at the time.

In a bid to unify his divided party, Biden finally had to come up with a $1.75 trillion plan instead of his original $3.5 trillion budget proposal. The trimmed down package includes preschool programmes, funding for limiting child care costs, and a continuation of the child tax credit.

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Moderate Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has urged his fellow lawmakers to wait for "greater clarity" on the legislation's impact on the country's national debt and economy. He made it clear that he would not vote for the reconciliation bill until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assesses the true cost of each of the package's programmes.

With the CBO still in the process of weighing up the legislation, a vote on the document expected later this month.