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Well, if you like most Americans out there, the economy is Issue No.1 for you, especially in the race for the White House. So a lot of you’re probably wondering: “what will the next president do?” when it comes to taxes. It’s a big question out there, with me now, is Jeanne Sahadi, a senior writer here at CNNmoney.com. Jeane, thanks for joining us.

You are welcome, thanks for having me.

Of course, you have a great piece on the site about exactly what Obama means by wealthy or by rich. So what does he mean? Where is the divide here when it comes to his proposal in terms of taxes?

Right, People who’ve been listening to him know he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. He defines that as about 250,000 dollars per couple and about 200,000 dollars for singles.

There are three distinct areas in terms of income areas where Obama has proposed taxes and why. Can you get into that a little bit?

He has proposed increases in three different areas, (OK.) one of them, income tax rates. He wants to reserve the Bush tax cuts for low and middle-income families, but he wants to increase the top two tax rates. Right now there are 33 percent and 35 percent under his proposals they would revert back to 36 percent and 39.6 percent which is where they were up before 2001.

What about pay roll taxes as well?

Right. Social security taxes he would like to see wealthier folks pay more into that system. Right now, the first 102,000 dollars of your wages are subject to that tax, which means, a lot of low and middle income people pay the social security tax on a 100% of their income. But high income folks only paid the tax on a portion of their income. Right? On a $204,000, I am only paying on a 50 percent of what I earned. So what Obama has proposed is that 102,000 will still be taxed. Then the amount of many people make above 250,000 would also be taxed. So that amount between 102 and 250 is protected.

It’s protected. OK, and also another interest to, to a lot of investors out there and people who’ve been following case, you know, IRA, is the capital gains tax.

Right. Capital gains and dividends right now are both taxed at 15 percent. Senator Obama has said he would continue to tax both of those things at the same level which tax experts applaud because it creates a lot of problems when they’re taxed differently. Ur, but he wants to raise the 15 percent right to somewhere between 20 percent, and something less than 28 percent. But based on some of the things he has said and what some political observers have told me and what they’ve said publicly is that it's unlikely that he would raise it at any higher than 25 percent and very likely he might opt for something closer to 20 percent, because, you know, Congress there’re a lot of Democrats in Congress who support lower capital gains, rates as an incentive to invest. So, he’s considered that.

You know, but we still haven’t gotten a very clear plan from him. Because I know Obama has said, you have it in your piece here, he told CNBC’s John Howard, basically, this all depends on the economic situation that I inherit from President Bush. So, is he kindda of ducking criticism here by saying that?

I think he is…Well, I can’t speak for him. But he, the way he has said it and the way his adviser had explained it to me is that he’s basically saying, ‘look, I’m gonna look at the facts on the ground when I get into office and I recognize that raising tax rates when the economy is weak, you know, might be counterproductive.’ But in long term they wanna raise the rates, because they wanna raise more revenue to provide for government programs and then they want to make the taxes more progressive.

Good news, bad news. Thanks for breaking down Obama’s plan for us. But if you have more questions, Jeanne has a lot of detail in her article. It is right here on our website.