As a practical matter, the debate over higher taxes is finished. If there's an agreement to avoid the "fiscal cliff," it will almost certainly contain large tax increases mostly or entirely on the wealthy.
President Barack Obama defines them as couples with more than $250,000 of income and singles with $200,000 or more. The open questions are which taxes would go up, by how much and with what effect.
Let's try to make sense of the numbers.
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