(Bloomberg News) President Barack Obama is promoting a "Buffett rule" setting a minimum tax rate for top earners to ensure they pay a higher percentage of their income than middle- class families. For the most part, they already do.

The average tax rate, including payroll taxes, for the middle 20 percent of U.S. families will be 15.9 percent in 2015, according to an estimate by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. Of the 217,000 households that would be affected by the Buffett rule, 4,000 will have incomes exceeding $1 million and tax rates below 15 percent, under slightly different measures of income and taxes by the center.

"The taxes paid by middle-class families are a lot lower than we think they are," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center. "Most people don't think about what their average tax rate is."

Obama plans to campaign for the Buffett rule today in Boca Raton, Florida, as he and Democrats in Congress move the issue to the forefront of their election-year agenda. Calling for tax fairness before the April 17 tax-filing deadline, Senate Democrats plan a procedural vote April 16 on a Buffett rule proposal by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

The measure probably won't have the votes needed to advance in the Senate, where Republicans -- who deride the emphasis on the Buffett rule as political theater -- have the ability to block legislation.

"The Buffett rule, amongst economists, could also be called the stupid rule," said Kevin Hassett, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington group that supports free enterprise. "It's basically just a back-door way to hike taxes on capital."

Under current law, capital gains and dividends are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent while wages and other ordinary income are taxed at as much as 35 percent. A new 3.8 percent tax on unearned income takes effect in 2013.

In naming their proposal, Democrats invoke billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who maintains he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary does, largely because of the preferential tax treatment given to capital gains and dividends.

The Senate measure would require households with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $2 million a year to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent. Households with incomes between $1 million and $2 million would pay part of the taxes needed to boost their tax rate to 30 percent.

The bill calculates the tax rate by using adjusted gross income as the base and includes employees' share of payroll taxes as part of the taxes paid. Households could deduct charitable contributions under the measure.

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