The highest earning Americans would pay a top rate of 23.8 percent for capital gains and dividends next year under a $272 billion, one-year extension of tax cuts that Senate Democrats are circulating among themselves.



A draft of the proposal shows that Democrats would keep income tax rates where they currently are for families earning below $250,000 a year and individuals making less than $200,000, as President Barack Obama has proposed. Obama and Democrats would let the tax cuts enacted a decade ago on those earning more than that expire, leaving them facing a top income tax bracket of 39.6 percent.