In just a few days, Americans will be deciding the future path of the country.  One of most important issues of many Americans is how will the John McCain and Barack Obama tax plans affect them personally.  That answer may be the determining factor of who is elected commander-in-chief.

Almost all of the federal tax cuts enacted since 2001, expire in 2010. AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) may end up hitting millions of middle class Americans.  Both of the candidates are proposing major tax changes, but each will have a dramatically different effect on each taxpayer and on the country as a whole.

Senator Barrack Obama’s tax plan calls for giving large tax breaks to middle and lower class Americans, while raising taxes significantly to those of upper-income earners.  John McCain’s plan calls for providing little relief to those at the bottom, while providing huge tax cuts to households at the very top.

In reviewing the two plans, Obama’s tax plans appears to be a conventional Democratic tax plan. It calls for cutting the middle class and lower class taxes (initially $1000 in 2009 while John McCain’s plan would provide $300 in tax relief), at the cost of raising the national debt by a staggering #3.3 trillion over the next ten years. However, the proposed plan raises some question about the ability to raise enough revenue to cover the plan.  Preliminary analysis has been unable to verify $900 billion of the revenue identified in his plan

McCain’s tax plan is as Repubican and Obama’s is Democratic. The top 20% of taxpayers get a 3% reduction in after-tax income in 2009, while the lowest-earning 60% would get less than 1%.