The one on the left already will raise taxes on the middle class. The one on the right has pledged to assure that tax cuts don't unduly favor the wealthy.

One of the consistent charges leveled against Romney in the comments ’round these parts has been that he will raise taxes on the middle class while reducing taxes on the wealthy.

Problem is, the study the folks who make that charge have been relying upon is terribly flawed and utterly ignores important parts of Romney’s plan. Romney, for instance, sets as a goal that the overall distribution of how the tax burden falls will not change. In other words, if the wealthiest 10 percent are paying 80-some percent of all income taxes right now his plans will actively try to maintain that ratio. Tax cuts, then, would be available for all who pay taxes, but the “fairness” of the distribution would not change.

The same cannot be said for the taxes set to be imposed by Obamacare. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT):

CBO and JCT now estimate that about 6 million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf ) and that total collections will be about $7 billion in 2016 and average about $8 billion per year over the 2017–2022 period.

Those estimates differ from projections that CBO and JCT made in April 2010: About two million more uninsured people are now projected to pay the penalty each year, and collections are now expected to be about $3 billion more per year.

So starting in 2016, on top of any taxes already due, six million Americans will have to cough up seven billion more dollars in taxes (that’s more than $1,000 on top of one’s tax bill per person) and that figure will rise to eight billion dollars for the years 2017-22 (or $1,333 more per person).

Mind you: this is not a health insurance premium; this is the tax penalty for failing to have your own insurance. So if you’re one of the six million Americans saddled with this new tax, you still won’t have insurance.