The tax plan created under Bush will expire in January, meaning that a new plan will need to be in place before we head into the new year. Already the battle over whether to extend them or let them die has become a political knife fight.

Democrats say the Republican plan will help the rich. Republicans claim the Democrat plan will bust the budget. We’ve heard so much back and forth about this, for so long, it’s hard to know what’s truth and what’s fiction. Well, a new study was released by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation that surveyed both plans. And this infographic in today’s Washington Post lays the facts right out there for us.

The two plans seem relatively similar up until you hit incomes of $500,000 per year, with Democrats seeking to give slightly more to the middle class.

But after that threshold, the Republican tax cuts look generous indeed for the extremely wealthy. As Jon Stewart and others have noted, this doesn’t seem to make much sense, if you’re trying to balance the budget. Which is why even Alan Greenspan has called for all of the Bush tax cuts to expire–even the ones to the middle class, which Democrats want to preserve.

[Washington Post]