The Bush Plan

             Dividends without taxes: .
             GAIN: .
             .
             .
             In his most controversial move, Bush called for the complete elimination of the tax on stock dividends for individual shareholders. The estimated cost of doing so would be more than $300 billion, or nearly half the cost of his total stimulus package. The president made the proposal to end what he called the "double taxation" of dividends. Currently, dividends are taxed twice: Companies pay dividends out of earnings that have already been taxed, then shareholders pay tax on dividends received. According to IRS data, just over 25 percent of U.S. tax filers claimed any dividend income on their 2000 returns, and 63 percent of the dividend income declared went to taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $100,000 or more. Helping the unemployedBush will ask Congress to extend federal unemployment benefits for more than 750,000 Americans whose benefits expired Dec. 28. In addition, Bush also wants to give states $3.6 billion to fund "personal re-employment accounts." An unemployed worker who has had difficulty finding work would receive up to $3,000 that may be used for job training, child care, transportation, relocation or other job-search expenses. A person who gets a job within 13 weeks of qualifying for the account will be able to keep any unused portion of the $3,000 as a "re-employment bonus," Bush said. The accounts would be available to about 1.2 million Americans, according to White House estimates. The people who would qualify for the accounts, according to CNN reports, would be new and existing recipients of unemployment benefits who are deemed likely to exhaust those benefits before finding work, or former unemployment insurance recipients who meet certain eligibility requirements. Increasing child tax creditsParents who earn $110,000 a year or less in adjusted gross income ($75,000 for singles) currently may deduct $600 per child per year as part of the Child Tax Credit.