US president Barack Obama asked lawmakers to again consider increasing taxes for high earners, private equity managers and oil and gas companies to pay for his $447 billion job-creation package.
The bill Mr Obama sent to Capitol Hill yesterday included previously proposed revenue-raising provisions, such as a cap on deductions for upper-income taxpayers, which have failed to advance in Congress in recent years.
The administration also proposed new ideas, such as curbing the amount of interest from municipal bonds that top earners could exclude from their income. Mr Obama also wants to raise $18 billion by taxing the carried interest, or profits-based compensation, of private equity managers, real estate investors and venture capitalists as ordinary income, instead of more lightly taxed capital gains.
Release of the plan sets the stage for a political fight with Republicans in Congress that will frame Mr Obama's strategy for a re-election campaign next year.
Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have signalled they may be willing to support some of the tax cuts while expressing skepticism about Mr Obama's spending and tax increase proposals.
"It would be fair to say this tax increase on job creators is the kind of proposal both parties have opposed in the past," Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement yesterday. "We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit."
The biggest revenue-raising proposal in the jobs package - about $400 billion - would cap at 28 per cent itemised deductions and some exemptions for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and married couples earning more than $250,000.
Bloomberg
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)