Taxes are never popular, especially in April of an election year. But the Republicans’ latest effort to tilt the tax code in favor of the wealthy, and starve the government of needed revenue, is particularly cynical.

This week, the House Republican leadership is expected to bring up the “Small Business Tax Cut Act,” a bill to let most business owners deduct up to 20 percent of their business income in 2012 — a $46 billion tax cut. Despite the Mom-and-Pop label, it is designed so that nearly half of the tax cut would go to people with annual income over $1 million, and more than four-fifths would go to those making over $200,000, according to the Tax Policy Center.

The bill’s proponents, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, say that lower taxes would lead to more hiring. But the economic reality is that employers, big and small, are hesitant to hire because of slow or uncertain demand for their products and services, not because of their tax burden. And companies would receive the tax cut even if they did not hire new workers — making it a windfall, not an incentive.

The bill is predicated on an overly broad definition of “small business” — one with fewer than 500 employees, which can include multimillion-dollar partnerships and corporations. It is also based on a willful denial of the reality that small businesses are not the big job creators politicians often say they are.