TaxVox: Individual Taxes

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The voices of Tax Policy Center's researchers and staff

Individual Taxes

How the Budget Baseline Favors Spending

July 2, 2008 –
The Congressional Budget Office’s expenditure and revenue baseline is supposed to illustrate the budget implications of extending current policy. Few may care how the baseline is actually constructed, but since all policy changes are measured “from the baseline,” the arcane definitions that describe current policy can have a profound effect on Congressional decisions.
Individual Taxes

Sovereign Wealth Funds and Taxes

July 1, 2008 –
Lots of buzz lately about sovereign wealth funds—those huge investment pools run by foreign governments that are becoming an increasingly important source of capital for U.S. companies. The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Phillips reports that foreign investors bought nearly $1 trillion in U.S. securities in 2007. And a small but growing share was acquired by sovereign wealth funds operated by dozens of countries, including China and the oil-soaked nations of the Middle East.
Individual Taxes

Who Really Pays Taxes?

June 26, 2008 –
Less than an hour after Howard Gleckman posted a blog entry on the presidential candidates’ tax plans, a question came in about TPC’s finding that Senator Obama’s plan would increase taxes of a low-income elderly couple by $150. How, the commenter asked, could that happen if Obama said he’d eliminate taxes for elderly households with income under $50,000?
Campaigns, Proposals, and Reforms

Obama and Social Security: Where’s the Beef?

June 24, 2008 –
Barack Obama has a plan to fix Social Security. Or does he? Obama does have a vague proposal to raise payroll taxes for workers making more than $250,000. But there is a lot less to it than meets the eye, and Obama has left some hugely important questions unanswered.
Individual Taxes

An Upcoming Tax Reform Program

June 21, 2008 –
I'll be moderating what should be an interesting discussion on fundamental tax reform at the New America Foundation on Tuesday. Other panelists will be New...
Campaigns, Proposals, and Reforms

What the Obama and McCain Plans Would Mean for Real Taxpayers

June 20, 2008 –
How will ordinary families be affected by the tax plans of John McCain and Barack Obama? To get some answers, I asked Greg Leiserson, TPC’s crack modeler, to develop some examples.
Campaigns, Proposals, and Reforms

McCain’s Disappearing Corporate Tax Reform

June 19, 2008 –
Johnny, we hardly new ye. John McCain’s ambitious plan to reform corporate taxes is disappearing faster than the Washington National's chances to win the national league pennant. What once had the makings of a provocative and potentially beneficial idea is morphing into a gimmicky mess.
Individual Taxes

Off Base: How McCain and Obama Hide Trillions in Debt

June 17, 2008 –
Barack Obama’s tax plan will either raise $262 billion over the next 10 years or increase the national debt by $2.7 trillion. John McCain would add either $615 billion or $3.6 trillion to the debt. What’s going on? Don’t everyone turn your computer off at once, but we need to talk about budget baselines.
Individual Taxes

Revised Estimates for the Candidates’ Tax Plans

June 17, 2008 –
We have updated our preliminary estimates of the revenue effects of the candidates’ tax plans. Our estimate for the ten-year revenue change compared with current law from Senator Obama’s plan is identical to that in our original study—a $2.7 trillion revenue loss. Our updated projection for Senator McCain’s plan shows a revenue loss of $3.6 trillion instead of $3.7 trillion. With interest costs, Obama would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt, while McCain would increase the debt by $4.3 trillion.
Campaigns, Proposals, and Reforms

Clarification on Senator Obama's Social Security plans

June 15, 2008 –
We've heard from the Obama campaign about our blog post on Senator Obama's Social Security tax increase on people earning more than $250,000. The campaign clarified that the threshold would be $250,000, but Senator Obama has not specified what the rate would be, when it would take effect, whether it would apply to employers, employees, or both, or what the tax base would be.