But those tax cuts are just a “show game,” according to Antony Davies, a Mercatus Center scholar at George Mason University in Fairfax and an economics professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Davies says it’s misleading to call Obama’s tax relief “tax cuts” because many of the middle to low-income recipients don’t pay any taxes at all. The tax cuts they’re receiving just represent money being shifted away from higher-income Americans, he said.

“Currently, only one half pay 97 percent of all federal income tax,” Davies said. “By definition, when you have a tax break it’s going to the wealthy Americans, because they’re the only ones paying taxes in the first place.”

A study done by the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Policy Center found that 47 percent of Americans will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. Released about a week before Tax Day, the study gained widespread attention.

Davies doesn’t think Tea Party protestors have deliberately ignored Obama’s tax cuts. Instead, they’re anticipating that the new government spending in the stimulus package and the healthcare bill will come back to haunt them, he said.

“People tend not to be aware of the actual tax policy so much as what they see hitting their checkbooks and what they perceive as coming down the road,” Davies said.

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