The President's stimulus plan would accelerate major elements of the income tax cuts enacted in 2001, provide additional temporary AMT relief, exempt dividends earned by individuals from income tax, and provide additional accelerated tax write-offs for small businesses. The tax provisions in the...
The figure shows one way to assess the federal income tax burden-federal income taxes as a share of income-for a family of four in the middle of the income distribution, and for similar families at twice and half that income level from 1955 to 2001. In 2001, the median family earned $63,278. By...
[Newsday] Currently affecting only a few, mostly wealthy, taxpayers, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) will expand dramatically over the next several years, visiting high tax rates and mind-numbingly complex paperwork on unsuspecting middle-class families. Prompt action could reverse...
A perpetual policy debate surrounds the proper taxation of capital gains. One concern is that the tax creates a "lock-in effect." That is, people will hold onto assets longer than they otherwise would in order to avoid the tax. If significant, the lock-in effect would represent an undesirable...
The practice of requiring well-to-do Americans to pay a minimum tax was developed more than three decades ago. In January, 1969, then-Treasury Secretary Joseph W. Barr informed Congress that 155 individual taxpayers with income exceeding $200,000 paid no tax in 1966. The news set off a political...
Originally targeted at high-income households, the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) is now on the verge of switching from a "class" tax to a "mass" tax. Under current law, the AMT will encroach dramatically on the middle-class over the next decade and will become the de facto tax...
Taxpayers pay alternative minimum tax (AMT) if their AMT liability exceeds their regular income tax. Originally targeted at a few high-income households who paid no federal income tax, this class tax is about to become a mass tax. The projected expansion occurs because the AMT is not indexed for...
In June 2001, Congress and the president approved the Economic Growth and Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), the largest tax cut in two decades. The multiyear cut, scheduled to phase in gradually over the decade, will reduce taxes (and government revenue) by $1.35 trillion by 2010. EGTRRA then...
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 phased out the estate tax by 2010, but it is scheduled to be restored, along with the rest of the 2001 tax changes, in 2011. This commentary argues that the federal estate tax is the most progressive tax in the federal system, an...
Republican leaders in Congress have refused to raise the federal debt limit unless the Biden Administration agrees to major spending reductions to reduce the national...
Congress should eliminate the debt ceiling this year. It serves no useful purpose. It doesn’t contribute to fiscal discipline, and breaching it entails large, potentially,...
On April 1, 2002, a press release announced, “The Tax Policy Center, a new joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution” was...
Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) recently asked for an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s research activities, including its use of contractors...
Partisan congressional squabbling over the nation’s debt limit once again threatens to shut down the federal government and perhaps trigger a worldwide financial crisis. The...
President Biden has proposed to tax capital gains earned by high-income households more like other income. This is a significant reform that would close loopholes...
Capitalism produces a dizzying array of products and, in the process, generates an enormous amount of wealth. But capitalism creates a problem in that the...
In 1970, Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute got a Moog synthesizer —a giant, unwieldy computer that created music. The sound was weird and quite evidently electronic. My...
Congress is about to pass a massive economic stimulus package that will, among other things, send cash to most American households. The so-called rebates amount...
On Friday, Elizabeth Warren released her financing plan for Medicare for All . It is predictably wonky and politically courageous—new spending is way more popular...
In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital , Kimberly Clausing has written a comprehensive and accessible analysis of three of...
The Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently agreed that OMB would review many tax regulations before they are released, a...
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) just introduced the ‘‘ Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act ’’ (or Stop-BEZOS) that would punish...
During primary season in 2000, I came upon my boss—a longtime Democratic insider—reading John McCain's tax plan. “It’s really good,” he said, and a lot...
