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 …
Republicans and Democrats on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction this week finally agreed on something substantive: The U.S. corporate tax rate is too high. It’s a point we’ve been making for years at Heritage. High federal and state corporate tax rates — a whopping 39.2 percent when combined — make it difficult for U.S. businesses to compete internationally. Over the past decade, other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have reduced their corporate tax rates. As a result, the United States now rivals Japan for …
In a time when the usage of the word “bipartisan” spawns cynicism among taxpayers across the 50 states, a recent bipartisan Senate bill stands out as an exception. “The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Judd Gregg (R-NH), is a serious bipartisan effort to overhaul our current tax code that most economists and business people agree constitutes one of the most damaging drags on U.S. competitiveness and economic recovery. To succeed, Wyden and Gregg will need to swim against a tide …
Everyone remembers President Obama’s now-infamous comment as a candidate that he thinks everyone is better when we “spread the wealth around.” Of course, we spread plenty of wealth around through the tax code before Obama became President. In 2006, the latest year of available data, the top 20 percent of earners paid over 86 percent of all income taxes. While the bottom 50 percent of earners paid almost no taxes whatsoever. To get a complete picture of government redistribution, however, we need to know who receives the spending in addition …
From Monday’s Wall Street Journal: If you thought Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was bad, wait until you hear about the inverted pyramid scheme the federal government is working on. While Mr. Madoff preyed on people who trusted him with their money, the federal government has everyone’s money, and the implications of its actions are worse. David GothardPicture an upside-down pyramid with its narrow tip at the bottom and its base on top. The only way the pyramid can stand is by spinning fast enough or by having a wide enough …
