The Post examines the economic positions of Senators Clinton and Obama in a front page article today. At one point it notes that both candidates want to eliminate the special tax break that allows fund managers to pay a tax rate of just 15 percent on most of their compensation. It reports that they get this tax break on "millions of dollars of income." Actually, they get this tax break on billions of dollars of income, not millions. In any given year, many individual fund managers earn more than $100 million (sometimes more than $1 billion) that qualifies for this special tax break. CBO estimated that the elimination of this tax break could raise several billion in additional tax revenue each year (between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent of total revenue).
--Dean Baker