E-mail Newsletter
Enter your e-mail address to receive periodic updates on TPC publications and events.
 newsletter archive
|
Publications By Author
Author: Harris, Benjamin H.
Analysis of Specific Tax Provisions in President Obama's FY2014 Budget (Research Report)
Benjamin H. Harris , Jim Nunns , Kim Rueben , Eric Toder , Roberton Williams
This document reviews several notable tax proposals in President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget. These include a 28 percent limit on certain tax expenditures, a cap on tax preferences for retirement savers with high balances, a minimum tax ("Buffett Rule") on high-income taxpayers, alternative incentives for infrastructure investment, and a new measure of inflation ("chained CPI") for indexing tax parameters.
Published: 05/08/13
Availability:
PDF
State and Local Governments in Economic Recoveries: This Recovery is Different (Research Report)
Benjamin H. Harris , Yuri Shadunsky
Examining state and local finances in recent economic recoveries, we find that state and local government activity exhibited an unprecedented decline during the most recent recovery. Never before had state and local contribution to GDP been negative three years after a recession passed its low point. This decreased activity caused a contraction in state and local government payrolls. While many factors affect these trends, it is likely that the unusually low growth in property tax revenue heavily impacted this decline.
Published: 04/22/13
Availability:
PDF
Creating an American Value-Added Tax (Research Report)
William G. Gale , Benjamin H. Harris
In this chapter, we propose a value-added tax (VAT) to contribute to the U.S. fiscal solution. A 5 percent broad-based VAT, paired with subsidies to offset the regressive impacts, could raise about 1 percent of GDP per year. International experience suggests that the VAT can raise substantial revenue, is administrable, and is minimally harmful to economic growth. Additionally, a properly designed VAT might help the states deal with their own fiscal issues. Although a VAT would be regressive relative to current income, this regressivity can be easily offset by transfers that would make the net burden progressive.
Published: 02/26/13
Availability:
PDF
Estate Taxes After ATRA (Article/Tax Facts)
Benjamin H. Harris
The American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) made estate tax law permanent following more than a decade of constant change. Following ATRA, the estate tax remains one of the most progressive parts of the tax code. In 2013, estates with gross assets exceeding $20 million will account for nearly three-fourths of the total estate tax revenue. About one-fifth of the burden will fall on estates valued between $10 million and $20 million, while just 7 percent will come from estates worth less than $10 million.
Published: 02/25/13
Availability:
PDF
Today's Unsustainable Budget Policy: A Recount (Research Report)
C. Eugene Steuerle , Benjamin H. Harris , Caleb Quakenbush
Although the recently passed American Taxpayer Relief Act instituted meaningful deficit reduction relative to previous policy, it still left the budget a far distance from any sustainable path. Under a plausible scenario, deficits never fall below 3.4 percent of GDP and rise to 5.4 percent of GDP by 2022. Given this baseline, an additional $150-$300 billion of annual deficit reduction, instituted after the economy has fully recovered, would put the budget on a stable path in the intermediate term while allowing for continued economic recovery. Yet even that path leaves longer-term budget problems unresolved. Without a more far-reaching agreement over such long-term issues, policymakers may have limited leeway to respond to new emergencies and meet the demographic pressures of the forthcoming decade.
Published: 01/30/13
Availability:
PDF
The Case for the Auto IRA (Research Report)
Ilana Fischer , Benjamin H. Harris , Rachel M. Johnson , Gary Koenig
The Auto IRA could improve retirement security for millions of workers while boosting America's saving rate, leading to improved living standards for future generations.
Published: 03/06/12
Availability:
HTML
Don't Fall For Corporate Repatriation (Commentary)
William G. Gale , Benjamin H. Harris
In a contribution to Politico, Bill Gale and Ben Harris discuss a tax holiday on repatriated funds.
Published: 06/27/11
Availability:
HTML
Reforming Taxes and Raising Revenue: Part of the Fiscal Solution (Research Report)
William G. Gale , Benjamin H. Harris
Many industrialized countries face significant medium-term fiscal deficits and unsustainable long-term fiscal trajectories. The recent fiscal crises in Greece and other countries are a stark reminder of the costs of ignoring these issues. The looming fiscal shortfalls and borrowing requirements they create are unprecedented. Restoring fiscal balance will demand a reworking of the fundamental, implicit or explicit social contracts in industrialized countries. More prosaically, the problem will be solved by some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases. In this paper, we focus on the challenges and opportunities that the fiscal problem creates for raising revenues and reforming taxation.
Published: 06/03/11
Availability:
HTML
| PDF
Capital Income Taxation and Progressivity in a Global Economy (Research Report)
Rosanne Altshuler , Benjamin H. Harris , Eric Toder
The increase in international capital mobility over the past two decades has put pressure on the tax treatment of corporate equity income. Corporate-level taxes distort investment flows across locations and create opportunities for tax avoidance by shifting income across jurisdictions. This paper explains why there may be both efficiency gains and increases in progressivity from shifting taxes on corporate equity income from the corporate to the shareholder level. We estimate that taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income could finance a substantial cut in the corporate tax rate and make the tax system more progressive.
Published: 04/26/11
Availability:
HTML
| PDF
Tax Proposals in the 2012 Budget (Research Report)
Benjamin H. Harris , Elaine Maag , Donald Marron , Jim Nunns , Joseph Rosenberg , Kim Rueben , Eric Toder , Roberton Williams
President Obama's 2012 Budget contains a number of tax provisions that would cut taxes for low- and middle-income households and raise taxes on wealthier taxpayers. This resource guide describes the tax proposals, offers more detailed commentary on key provisions, and links to tables showing the distributional effects of the overall proposal and various elements of the plan.
Published: 03/28/11
Availability:
HTML
| PDF
|
|
by topic