In light of the impending Obama Tax Hikes, Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy created the chart to the right illustrating Hauser’s Law which Standford University professor Kurt Hauser recapped in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal: Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I …
The political math was simple and should have been fool-proof: Proponents of a high-earner income tax in the state of Washington needed only a majority of voters to approve a tax on a tiny minority of their peers. After all, Initiative 1098, which would have imposed a 5 percent tax on the adjusted gross income of individuals who earn more than $200,000 — or $400,000 for couples — and a 9 percent tax on the AGI of individuals who earn more than $500,000 — or $1 million for couples — …
Preliminary figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that Washington ran a $1.291 trillion deficit in 2010, just slightly less than last year’s $1.416 trillion. To put these figures in perspective, the annual budget deficit between 1789 and 2008 never reached $500 billion. As a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), the past two years’ deficits of 10.0 and 8.9 dwarf all other deficits since World War II. Recession-damped revenues continued to contribute to the budget deficit, coming in at 14.7 percent of GDP. However, low revenues are …
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Vice President Joe Biden said the following: “the top 1 percent of earners get 22 percent of all income made in the U.S. Taxes have been lowered for the wealthy considerably over the years. It’s about time we get a little tax equity here.” Putting aside the fact that the Vice President thinks top-earners “get” their income instead of earning it through hard work, innovation and business acumen, he is right that the top one percent of taxpayers earn 22 percent of all …
Throughout his 1992 campaign, then-candidate Bill Clinton promised tax cuts for the middle class. By the time he was sworn into office in 1993, though, Clinton said he would have to “revisit” his tax-cut plan and was “absolutely mystified” that the media had perceived it as a major pledge. A year later Americans punished Clinton by electing the first Republican Congress in more than 40 years. President-elect Barack Obama also campaigned on a middle class tax cut, but so far, he seems intent on not repeating Clinton’s mistake. Yesterday on …
NBA owners and players will have to swallow hard if that avid hoops fan, Barack Obama, is elected president and pushes through his tax plan. It’s not just players like Celtics star Kevin Garnett, the league leader in pay, who’d have to figure on paying more in federal income taxes. In fact, the NBA’s 20 highest-paid stars each would lose, on average, an additional $1.2 million to an Obama administration. And plenty of American players could increase their net incomes by signing with overseas franchises. (Obama and running mate Joe Biden might call that “unpatriotic” and “selfish.”) …
It’s that time of year again. Congress is facing its annual AMT predicament, and once again Americans must suffer through the same worn out debate thanks to House Democrats. The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is a classic example of a broken Congress. The AMT, created in 1969 to prevent the wealthiest 155 Americans from avoiding taxes completely, was never indexed to inflation and now inadvertently impacts millions of Americans each year. Oddly enough, eliminating this tax is one policy Democrats and Republicans actually agree on. But elimination is not in …
The New York Sun pokes fun at the Treasury Department, which this week released two reports assessing the impact of the 2003 tax cuts: We confess we stumbled a few times in making our way through the language, which seems at times to buy into left-wing assumptions. “Capital gains income, which is not captured in GDP, more than quadrupled between 1994 and 2000,” says one of the papers. “Tax receipts from capital gains realizations more than tripled during this period, even though the tax rate on capital gains was reduced …
