Tax breaks included in the minimum wage increase bill introduced by Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY), John Shimkus (R-IL) and others would cut taxes by close to $100 billion over the next decade, with almost three-quarters of the tax cuts targeted to the best-off one percent of Americans.

An analysis of the tax provisions of the Lazio-Shimkus bill released today by Citizens for Tax Justice finds that:

• The best-off one percent of all taxpayers, those making more than $301,000 a year, would get average annual tax cuts of $5,999 each under the plan (in today's dollars). The top one-percent would enjoy 73.4% of the total tax cuts provided by the bill.
• In contrast, the bottom 60 percent of all taxpayers would get only 2.7 percent of the tax cuts. The average tax reduction for the bottom 60 percent would be $4 a year.

"It's astonishing that a minimum wage bill supposedly designed to aid low-wage workers would actually give its biggest benefits to the highest-income people in the country," said Citizens for Tax Justice director Robert S. McIntyre.

The Lazio-Shimkus bill would:

• Cut the top estate tax rate from 55% to 48%, eliminate the 5% surtax that recaptures the benefits of the lower estate tax rates, reduce other estate tax rates by 2 percentage points, and replace the credit against estate taxes with an exemption (worth more to the largest estates). The estate tax cuts amount to well over half the total tax cuts proposed in the bill.
• Provide added tax breaks for pensions and 401(k) plans.
• Increase the limits on expensing of capital outlays.
• Speed up the date for allowing 100% of self-employed health insurance to be deducted.
• Increase the write-off for business meals to 60% of cost from 50% under current law.
• Extend the work opportunity and welfare to work business tax credits.
• Expand enterprise zones.
• Provide tax breaks for timber companies.
• Expand the tax credit for investors in low-income housing
• Augment tax breaks for private tax-exempt bonds.

Official revenue estimates of the cost of the Lazio-Shimkus bill has not yet been released by the Joint Committee on Taxation, but based on earlier JCT estimates of similar provisions, the tax cuts would appear to cost approximately $97 billion from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2009.

A table detailing the distributional effects of the bill follows.

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