Does Obama support raising capital gains taxes?

No for individuals making less than $250,000; Yes for individuals making $250,000 or more.

Obama supports increase taxes on capital gains investments for people making $250,000 a year or more, from the current 15% rate back to at most the 28% rate it was under Bill Clinton. [1,2]

Obama, in September 2007:

"The numbers don't lie. At a time when income inequality is growing sharper, the Bush tax cuts gave the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans a tax cut that was twice as large as the middle class. At a time when Americans are working harder than ever, we are taxing income from work at nearly twice the level that we're taxing gains for investors.

"Talk about this in polite company, and sooner or later you'll get accused of waging class warfare. As if it's distasteful to point out that some CEOs make more in ten minutes than a worker makes in ten months. Or, as my friend Warren Buffet put it to me - 'If there's class warfare going on in America, then my class is winning.'" [3]

In his autobiography "The Audacity of Hope" Obama quotes more from billionaire Warren Buffet, whose income is almost all from investments. Buffet:

"Though I've never used tax shelters or had a tax planner, after including the payroll taxes we each pay, I'll pay a lower effective tax rate this year than my receptionist. In fact, I'm pretty sure I pay a lower rate than the average American...

"Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in the market economy. And it just makes sense that those of us who benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share." [4]

In "The Audacity of Hope" Obama goes on to say:

"Between 1971 and 2001, while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500 percent. The distribution of wealth is even more skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than any time since the Gilded Age... Bush's tax cuts made them worse." [4]

Some critics of Obama's proposal argue that increasing capital gains taxes leads to decreased federal tax realizations as a result of decreased investment activity. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office, however, has concluded: