In response to my blog the other day about economists endorsing John McCain’s proposal to create an alternative individual income tax, Winghunter asked a perfectly reasonable question: What would such a scheme do for the economy?
I turned in my PhD dissertation just in time. I can’t believe I’m going to be a doctor of public finance. My paper: An Alternative Tax System in the McCain Administration. It is a detailed description and macroeconomic analysis of John McCain’s plan to give taxpayers a choice of paying under the current system or through a much simpler and more efficient option.
John Endean raised an intriguing idea the other day in response to my blog on whether business executives would be willing to give up targeted tax breaks in return for a lower corporate rate, as John McCain has suggested.
Unlike many bloggers, I am not going to bash John McCain’s renewed interest in balancing the budget. It is nice to see his on-and-off love affair with fiscal responsibility heating up again. There is just one problem with his vow to balance the budget by 2013. He can’t do it. Or, to be more precise, he can’t do it while extending the Bush tax cuts, cutting other taxes of his own, and maintaining a costly military presence in Iraq.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page ran one of its favorite tables the other day, purporting to show how uncompetitive the U.S. corporate tax regime is with the rest of the developed world. The chart shows that, at nearly 40%, combined state and federal statutory rates here are far higher than the average of the countries in the OECD.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
