In his recent radio speech, Tom Daschle stated that according to the Tax Policy Center, a person making more than $1 million a year would save $24,000 in taxes under the Bush tax plan while a person earning from $40,000 to $50,000 a year would save only $76. These numbers are already being widely quoted in the media.

I scoured the Tax Policy Center site, and found nothing with these numbers, but the site is so extensive I might easily have missed them.

I found this table, but the numbers don't match up. The income ranges don't even match.

It goes without saying that an across the board tax cut will keep larger amounts of money in the hands of those who pay a lot more taxes, but I have not seen anything that shows a tax cut of less than several hundreds of dollars for people in the 40-50K income range. The table I link to above has someone with an average pre-tax income of $34,400 getting their taxes cut by $570.

I sent the Tax Policy Center an e-mail, which I hope leads me to some real numbers. Or I may have to conclude that Daschle pulled his numbers out of a hat. Wouldn't be the first time.

The Tax Policy Center also has a considerable amount of information on the burden being placed on middle-class taxpayers by the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is worth looking at.