The President's Tax Proposal: Second Thoughts

On January 7, 2003, President Bush proposed a new package of tax cuts, consisting primarily of a new tax cut for dividends and capital gains on corporate stock and an acceleration of most but not all of the provisions of the 2001 tax cut that were scheduled to take effect in future years.1 In the last two weeks, this column provided initial reactions to the package and a more focused examination of the proposal to cut taxes on dividends and capital gains. This week, we build on these findings and focus on four broad aspects of the plan: Budget effects, distributional effects, economic effects, corporate tax reform.