The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its outlook for the federal budget last week. According to the CBO’s “Alternative Fiscal Scenario,” tax receipts will match their historical average in 2017, when revenue will be 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Receipts will continue growing after that. CBO’s alternative scenario assumes the following: The Bush tax cuts remain in place for all taxpayers (even families making more than $250,000 a year); Congress raises the income threshold for the Alternative Minimum Tax so it doesn’t hit millions of middle-income taxpayers it …
On December 31, a set of approximately 50 tax-reducing provisions commonly referred to as the “tax extenders” expired. These provisions, which apply to both individuals and businesses, include popular measures such as the Research and Experimentation credit for businesses and the optional deduction for state and local sales taxes for individuals. Congress will need to retroactively extend these tax laws at some point this year; otherwise, a steep tax increase on certain groups of taxpayers will remain in place. Retroactively addressing the tax extenders is nothing new. Congress generally waits …
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D–NV) drifted off to fairy-tale world this week and dreamed up some statistics as he did. On the floor of the Senate, Reid said the following: Many of our job creators are like unicorns—they’re impossible to find and don’t exist. That’s because only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than one percent, are actually small business owners and only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction is a traditional job creator. This claim is wildly off base. Senator …
Tax hikes were the focal point of the contentious, failed supercommittee negotiations designed to reduce the national debt by at least $1.2 trillion. Democrats wanted massive tax hikes. Republicans flirted with a tax reform deal lowering rates and closing loopholes. But the fact that tax hikes were at the center of the debate indicates that the committee – which includes Michigan Reps. Dave Camp and Fred Upton – fails to grasp the true nature of our debt crisis. Overspending, especially on entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, is …
The Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee recently submitted their recommendations for tax reform to the deficit reduction super committee. Their recommendations lay out the principles they’d like tax reform to adhere to: economic growth, fairness, simplicity, revenue neutrality, permanence, competitiveness, and savings and investment. Towards those ends, the Senate Finance Republicans offer several specific policies: An income tax rate for individuals and corporations that is no higher than 25 percent; Repeal of Obamacare and its tax increases; Full repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax; Adoption of a territorial …
President Obama is fond of saying he hasn’t raised anyone’s taxes. How soon he forgets the $500 billion tax hike in his health care law. Obamacare raised 18 separate taxes and included a brand new 10 percent excise tax on tanning beds. The tanning bed tax started in July 2010. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should have little trouble collecting this ridiculous tax. It already collects several other excise taxes on things like alcohol, tobacco, and gas. And the federal government has collected excises since the beginning of the republic. …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its long-term outlook for the federal budget. As expected, we are going broke slightly faster than we were a few months ago. No doubt the usual bigger-government types will use this news to repeat the mantra that we need to both cut spending and “enhance revenues” (a thinly veiled euphemism for tax hikes). Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner used this oft-repeated line just this week.
Most people think of savings as that portion of a family’s income that they put away for emergencies, a big purchase, or their kids’ college education. It seems that some in the media want to change that definition. The Hill ran an article equating tax increases with “savings” in terms of the budget deficit: Senate Democrats claim they are close to agreement on a spending plan that would reduce borrowing by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, with about half the savings coming from higher taxes. To review: …
The United States will soon have the highest corporate tax rate in the world once Japan enacts its pledge to cut its rate. This dishonorable distinction is driving both Washington lawmakers and the business community to finally call for long-overdue reform. Politico reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will release the Obama Administration’s plan for corporate tax reform in the coming weeks. There are many outlines the plan could take, because there are so many problems with the corporate tax code that need fixing. But no matter what form the …
It seems everyone except President Obama is presenting a detailed plan for dealing with our nation’s rapidly growing debt these days. The latest entry comes from the Bipartisan Policy Council. One feature of their plan, “SAVEGO,” calls for automatic spending cuts and higher taxes should Congress not reduce the debt to a predetermined share of the nation’s economy by 2021. So, if Congress fails to make necessary spending cuts, or the President vetoes them, the Treasury Secretary would raise tax rates and reduce tax deductions. This is in essence a …
