The question of who wins and who loses if Congress fails to extend across-the-board Bush-era tax cuts seems to have more variables than a high school calculus equation.

The myriad hypotheticals can be mind-numbing. So along comes tax consulting firm Deloitte Tax LLP to add a bit of clarity. Quite a bit of clarity, in fact.

Deloitte issued a report last week that left no question as to what will happen if Congress continues to bicker and dither, and if President Obama fails to push through his controversial plan to allow some of the tax cuts to expire but not others.

If Congress does nothing and all the tax cuts expire, taxes will rise significantly for almost everyone in the country, according to Deloitte’s analysis.

Here’s what the report found: a typical family of four with a household income of $50,000 a year would have to pay $2,900 more in taxes in 2011. A similar family of four making $100,000 a year will see its tax bill rise by $4,500 next year.

Higher-earning families would take an even bigger hit. A family of four earning $500,000 a year would pay $10,800, while the same family taking home $1 million a year would pay an additional $53,200 in taxes.

“If Congress was to fail to extend (the cuts), that would be close to disastrous,” said Clint Stretch, managing principal for tax policy for Deloitte Tax. “I don’t see how these folks can fail to extend the middle-class tax cuts. People would be angrier than they are now.”

Obama wants to extend the tax cuts for all households making less than $250,000 a year. For individual tax filers, the amount falls to $200,000. The White House says only 2% of U.S. wage earners would be affected by this formula, and those affected would be the very richest of all Americans.

Republicans counter that these are the same Americans who employee millions of other Americans. They want the tax cuts extended across-the-board.

It’s a precarious political position for Democrats, especially those facing re-election in November. For a decade Democrats have maligned the Bush tax cuts as a little more than a giveaway for the rich.

But Democrats weren’t telling the whole story. The tax cuts also lowered taxes for earners of all incomes by reducing marginal income tax rates at every level. The cuts also provided breaks for education, families with children and for married couples.

To allow those tax cuts to expire would raise taxes for earners of all incomes, as the Deloitte study pointed out (perhaps inconveniently for Democrats).

Consequently, if Congress can’t agree on if and how to extend the tax breaks, nearly every American who takes home a paycheck will see that check diminish in the next 12 months.

Supporters of an across-the-board extension -- even a temporary one -- note that Bush introduced his cuts following a decade of prosperity, an environment conducive to such a policy. Meanwhile, Obama is proposing a tax increase (for some) on the heels of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Critics of Obama’s formula say it will further crimp businesses’ ability to create jobs.

But the White House has argued that extending the tax cuts for America’s wealthiest will deprive the U.S. budget of $700 billion in desperately needed revenue.

At a town hall meeting Tuesday, the President framed the issue as a deficit reduction effort.

“I can’t give tax cuts to the top 2% of Americans” and “lower the deficit at the same time,” Obama said at an event in Washington. He added that giving “tax relief primarily to millionaires and billionaires” would be “an irresponsible thing for us to do.”

“Those folks are least likely to spend it,” the president said.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio has proposed extending the tax cuts across-the-board for two years, and a growing number of Democrats are getting on board with that sentiment.

Political analysts say the worst thing Congress could do is to continue bickering and not do anything. An angry electorate forced to pay more in taxes because of the inability of Congress to act on a matter of such importance would only exacerbate tax payers’ frustrations, they say.

Tea Party anyone?