Bill Gates owns 1.19 billion shares of Microsoft stock. Without the [legislative] change, his tax bill on Microsoft's 16-cent dividend would be roughly $73.4 million. After the change: $28.5 million, a savings of $44.9 million.
One needn't be the richest man in America to get a windfall. Sanford Weill will see his tax bill for dividends on Citigroup stock cut by about $4 million. Michael Eisner's bill for Disney dividends will drop by $692,000.
In contrast, the typical American* with earnings between $50,000 and $100,000 had $855 in dividend income in 2001, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan** group in Washington that monitors tax policy. That household's dividend tax savings would be just over $200. The typical $50,000 a year household would save about $100.
*Lie #1: There is no typical American. Half of Americans own stocks, half don't. So who is typical? The ones without stocks and therefore without any newly tax-free dividend income?
**Lie #2: The Tax Foundation is not nonpartisan: it is a fanatically partisan and ideological group that subsists on financial support from the usual right wing suspects, a cadre of foundations bearing the names Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Koch, and the rest of the miserly misanthropes.
Considering the unreliable source of the figures, even the ridiculous $100 to $200 savings that an imaginary "typical" American would receive are a lie, an exaggeration, or both at once.
