Recently in Tax Giveaways for Corporations Category

The Treasury Department has recently issued rulings that to allow a newly bailed out General Motors to avoid part of the 1986 tax reform that is supposed to prevent abusive tax shelters.

Many years ago, Congress enacted rules to keep companies from trafficking in net operating losses (NOLs). Profitable companies were buying companies with NOLs and using the NOLs to offset their income, reducing or completely eliminating their tax liability. In many cases ability to use the NOLs was the only valuable asset the loss company owned. So Congress added Internal Revenue Code Section 382 to limit the amount of NOL "carryforwards" that companies can use when there is a change in ownership of more than 50 percent.

Under the General Motors restructuring, the federal government will own about 60 percent of the stock of the new GM. Generally that would mean that the ability to use the NOLs would be strictly limited (a small portion would be allowable each year). But the Treasury Department has issued a series of rulings that will allow GM to use the NOLs. The rulings basically treat the U.S. government as never having been a shareholder. So if things start looking up for the troubled automaker and the government is able to share some of its stake in the company, the GM stock will be significantly more valuable to a potential investor because of the NOLs that will save GM taxes in the future. Net operating losses can be carried forward 20 years to offset taxable income. They can also be carried back two years, but GM has not posted a profit since 2004.

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) has joined forces with a broad coalition of organizations called Rebuild and Renew America Now (RRAN) to promote a simple message: Congress has a whole lot of options to raise revenue to pay for health care reform and other initiatives without unfairly impacting low- or middle-income people and without harming the economy.

These progressive revenue options include both the tax changes included in President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget proposals as well as additional options formulated in a recent report by CTJ and endorsed by Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). (See CTJ's report on the President's tax proposals and CTJ's report on additional revenue options to fund health care reform.)

RRAN is a coalition that engaged in education, communications and lobbying efforts in support of the President's budget and other progressive initiatives earlier this year and has mobilized advocates and activists all over the country. Many of the organizations involved are usually focused on particular public services or progressive reforms, but have realized that all public services and reforms are in danger if Congress can't bring itself to raise the revenue needed to pay for them.

RRAN has invited organizations (both national organizations and state organizations) to sign onto its two-page statement of principles for this new campaign for progressive revenue options. Signing does not commit an organization to do anything (although all are also encouraged to become active in RRAN's activities) but simply states support for efforts to pay for initiatives in progressive ways. Anyone who is authorized to sign on behalf of an organization can visit the website of the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) or simply click here.

The statement lists three broad principles to guide Congress's efforts to find revenue:

1. Adequacy. The federal tax system should raise sufficient revenue over time to meet our shared priorities and invest in our common future.

2. Fairness. Tax preferences that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and corporations should be eliminated, and individuals and businesses should contribute their fair share of taxes, based on ability to pay.

3. Responsibility. We should not saddle future generations with unsustainable levels of debt.

The statement also lists examples of the kinds of tax policies RRAN supports:

• raising revenues from upper-income households;
• assessing a significant tax on large estates;
• reducing abuses among corporations and individuals who shelter income in offshore tax evasion or avoidance schemes;
• closing financial industry, oil and gas, and other inefficient corporate loopholes; and
• reducing tax preferences for unearned as opposed to earned income.

For more information in the coming days, visit RRAN's website: www.rebuildandrenew.org

On May 11, the Treasury Department released its "Green Book" containing new details of the tax changes included in the President's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal. In addition to extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest Americans and making permanent many of the tax cuts in the recently enacted economic recovery act, the President would also make many changes that would raise revenue by closing loopholes, blocking tax avoidance schemes and making the tax code more progressive.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice examines and describes the significant revenue-raising provisions that are sure to be debated fiercely in the months to come.

Read the report.

New Data from Citizens for Tax Justice Shows that the U.S. Tax System Is Not as Progressive as You Think

Many politicians, pundits and media outlets have recently claimed that the richest one percent of American taxpayers are providing a hugely disproportionate share of the tax revenue we need to fund public services. New data from Citizens for Tax Justice show that this simply is not true. CTJ estimates that the share of total taxes (federal state and local taxes) paid by taxpayers in each income group is quite similar to the share of total income received by each income group in 2008.

- The total federal, state and local effective tax rate for the richest one percent of Americans (30.9 percent) is only slightly higher than the average effective tax rate for the remaining 99 percent of Americans (29.4 percent).

- From the middle-income ranges upward, total effective tax rates are virtually flat across income groups.

Read the fact sheet.

When anti-tax activists and lawmakers complain that Congress and the President are pursuing policies that will cause taxes to be too high, the first question anyone should ask is: Compared to what? What exactly is the alternative to allowing the Bush tax cuts to end (at least for the rich) and finding new ways to raise revenue?

This week the House GOP showed us what the alternative is and it's frightening. On Wednesday, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives' Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), released a budget plan which he argues is a more fiscally responsible alternative to the budget outline proposed by President Obama and the similar budget resolutions approved by both chambers last night. His proposal is apparently an update of the plan that House GOP leaders introduced last week and is different in some key respects.

The revised House GOP budget plan would move towards cutting and privatizing Medicare, convert Medicaid into limited block grants to states, and even cut Social Security benefits for some retirees. The plan would deeply cut the relatively small amount of government spending devoted to non-military, non-mandatory programs by refusing to adjust the budgets of these programs for inflation and population growth for five years. The House GOP plan would repeal the recently enacted economic stimulus law (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA) a year before its expiration at the end of 2010.

A report from Citizens for Tax Justice compares the income tax proposals in the House GOP plan to the income tax proposals in the House Democratic plan in 2010, and finds that:

• Over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010.
• The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average, in income taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the Democratic plan in 2010.
• The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan, which is presented as a fiscally responsible alternative to the Democratic plan, would cost over $225 billion more than the Democratic plan's income tax policies in 2010 alone.

Read the report.

Yesterday, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives' Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), released a budget plan which he argues is a more fiscally responsible alternative to the budget outline proposed by President Obama and the similar budget resolutions working their way through the House and Senate right now. His proposal is apparently an update on the plan that House GOP leaders introduced last week and is different in some key respects.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice compares the income tax proposals in the House GOP plan to the income tax proposals in the House Democratic plan in 2010, and finds that:

• Over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010.
• The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average, in income taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the Democratic plan in 2010.
• The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan, which is presented as a fiscally responsible alternative to the Democratic plan, would cost over $225 billion more than the Democratic plan's income tax policies in 2010 alone.

Read the report.

This week, Citizens for Tax Justice updated its recent report on the tax proposals in the President's budget outline to include estimates of the proposals' impacts on different income groups in every state. The new state figures examine the proposed cuts compared to current law and also compared to the baseline that the Obama administration uses in presenting its budget figures. The figures show that, whichever baseline is used, the vast majority of families in every state will get a significant tax break.

Read the report. (State-by-state figures are in the final appendix.

Citizens for Tax Justice called uponPresident Obama this week to stand by his message of transparency by finally making "tax expenditure" performance reviews a regular part of the OMB's evaluations of government effectiveness.

Simply put, tax expenditures differ from the rest of the tax code in that they focus on encouraging a specific activity or rewarding a particular group of people, rather than on trying to improve the efficiency, simplicity, or fairness of our tax system.Since tax expenditures are usually enacted with primarily non-tax goals in mind (e.g. encouraging investment, encouraging research and development, encouraging home ownership, etc.) it is important that the government make an effort to gauge their effectiveness in achieving those goals.

But despite calls from the GAO, past Congresses, and outside experts in favor of subjecting tax expenditures to regular performance reviews, the most comprehensive performance measure currently in place, the OMB's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), continues to focus narrowly on only traditional spending programs.

Encouragingly, language in the President's recently released budget blueprint suggests that a more comprehensive approach for evaluating the government's performance will be used under the Obama Administration (see. pp.39).It's hard to see how anything approaching true comprehensiveness could ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars the government directs toward programs administered via the tax code.Hopefully, the brief language addressing performance reviews that was included in this blueprint is the first signal that an end is coming to the free-ride thus far enjoyed by tax expenditures.

Read the full statement from CTJ

On February 26, President Obama sent to Congress the blueprint for what could be one of the most progressive federal budgets in generations. The budget calls for national health care reform, expanded education funding, a program to reduce global warming, and several improvements in human needs programs. As a new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains, it would make the tax code considerably more progressive, and close a number of egregious tax loopholes.

There is, however, a flaw in the budget proposal: It does not raise enough revenue to pay for public services. Instead, its net effect is to cut taxes dramatically.

Opponents of the President have attempted to argue that the budget proposal calls for tax increases that could sink the economy, but this complaint is plainly unfounded. President Bush and his allies in Congress were adamant that lower taxes would lead to an explosion of prosperity, and they enacted tax cuts in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006. Some allies of the former President argue that Congress is now insufficiently focused on tax cuts, but this view seems bizarre and incredible given the sad economic facts all around us.

Indeed, one might reasonably conclude that we could safely allow most of the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010, as they are scheduled to under current law, without any concern about how this will impact the economy. But President Obama actually proposes to keep most of the Bush tax cuts. Obama's largest proposed tax cut is to re-enact 80 percent of the Bush tax cuts that are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Most of this reflects re-enacting the Bush income tax cuts for married couples with incomes below $250,000 and others with incomes below $200,000 (or put another way, for about 98 percent of taxpayers), and permanently reducing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). In addition, Obama proposes to re-enact close to half of the Bush estate tax cut.

On top of re-enacting most of the Bush tax cuts, the Obama budget includes a number of additional tax cuts for families and individuals. (These would be extensions of temporary tax cuts included in the recently passed stimulus law.) It also proposes some questionable business tax cuts.

Partially offsetting its tax-cut proposals, the Obama budget proposes some significant revenue-raising provisions. These include a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, a limit on the benefits of itemized deductions for high-bracket taxpayers, and a number of corporate and high-income loophole-closing measures.

Read the Report

On January 28, the House of Representatives approved an economic stimulus bill with an official cost of $819 billion, and $275 billion of that went to tax cuts. One alternative stimulus bill that received quite a lot of support from the House Republicans consisted entirely of tax cuts and included provisions that would clearly not provide an immediate boost to the economy (like making permanent the Bush tax cuts for capital gains and dividends, which do not even expire until the end of 2010). CTJ released state-by-state figures showing that the poorest 60% of taxpayers would receive over half of the benefits of the key tax cuts under the House Democrats' plan and less than 5% of the benefits of the House GOP plan.

House Republicans put forth another plan, this one with strong backing from their leadership, that would reduce the bottom two income tax rates from 10% and 15% to 5% and 10%, and provide more tax cuts for businesses. CTJ released state-by-state figures showing that less than a quarter of the benefits of the individual tax cuts in this House GOP plan would go to the poorest 60% of taxpayers.

The House Democrats' plan was passed without a single Republican vote. Progressives found that the House-passed bill did contain some tax cuts that were basically giveaways for business (as CTJ also argued in its reports). But overall the House-passed bill promised to be an effective boost for the economy.

The Senate took up its bill the following week and managed to lard it up with several ineffective tax cuts. Fortunately, the House-Senate conference that met to work out the differences between the two chambers significantly scaled back many -- but not all -- of the ineffective tax cuts.

Amnesty for Offshore Tax Avoidance: Rejected on Senate Floor

As the stimulus package was being debated on the Senate floor, progressives did score several defensive victories. For example, the body rejected an amendment offered by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) that would provide a tax amnesty for corporations that had moved profits offshore (often only on paper to avoid taxes). Profits that were "repatriated" to the United States would be subject to an almost non-existent 5.25 percent tax rate instead of the usual 35 percent tax rate. As explained in a CTJ report on "repatriation," this idea was tried five years ago and did not lead to any of the job creation that was promised. Worse, repeating this debacle would only encourage companies to move profits offshore, since they would figure that if they waited a few years, Congress would once again be in the mood to enact a tax amnesty. Fortunately, a solid majority of senators saw that this was terrible tax policy and rejected this amendment.

The Senate's Senseless Six

But plenty of ill-advised tax cuts did make their way into the Senate-passed bill, some as provisions included in the bill reported out of the Finance Committee, and others adopted as amendments on the Senate floor. Earlier this week, CTJ ranked several tax cuts included only in the Senate bill (or taking a larger form in the Senate bill) as the "Six Worst Tax Cuts in the Senate Stimulus Bill." (Read the full report here or the two-page summary here.) The largest of those six tax cuts is included in the final package, but several others have been excluded (or mostly excluded) from the deal.

1. One-year AMT "patch": included in conference agreement.

This one-year reduction in the Alternative Minimum Tax will provide essentially no benefit to the poorest 60 percent of Americans -- and unfortunately was included in the final stimulus package. For more details, as well as state-by-state figures showing how taxpayers would be affected, see CTJ's new report on the AMT "patch."

2. Homebuyer tax credit: dramatically scaled back in conference agreement.

The House-passed bill had a version of this provision that waived the repayment requirement for the limited $7,500 first-time homebuyer credit that Congress enacted in its housing bill last year. The Senate adopted an amendment by Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) (who voted against the bill itself) to provide a $15,000, non-refundable tax credit with no income limits for any home purchase (not just for first-time home purchases). The Senate version would cost $35 billion more than the House version. Fortunately, this provision is scaled down in the conference agreement to something closer to the House version, with an increase in the maximum credit to $8,000, at a cost of $6.6 billion.

3. Deduction for automobile purchases: dramatically scaled back in conference agreement.

This $11 billion provision was added to the Senate bill as an amendment offered by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) as an above-the-line deduction for interest payments on an automobile purchase as well as the state and local sales taxes paid on that purchase. Apparently, members of the House-Senate conference decided that subsidizing consumer debt is not such a great idea. This provision has been reduced to a $1.7 billion provision allowing a deduction for just the sales taxes paid, but not the interest, on an automobile purchase.

4. Suspension of taxes on UI benefits: included in conference agreement.

The Senate included in its bill this provision to eliminate federal income taxes on the first $2,400 of unemployment insurance benefits in tax year 2009. The best way to target aid to those who could use some help is to target aid by income level. This provision would target aid to those whose income takes a particular form rather than those whose income is below a particular level, meaning a person whose spouse earns $300,000 a year would still get this tax break if they have unemployment benefits. This provision is included in the conference agreement.

5. Five-year carryback of net operating losses (NOLs): dramatically scaled back in conference agreement.

This provision would put money in the hands of business owners but do nothing to change their incentives to invest or create jobs. The version of this tax cut included in the House-passed bill would cost $15 billion while the Senate version would cost $19.5 billion. Fortunately, the version of this tax cut in the conference agreement is smaller than either of these, with a cost of only $1 billion (officially). The conference agreement would allow this tax cut only for companies with gross receipts under $15 million.

6. Delayed recognition of certain cancellation of debt income: included in conference agreement.

Under current law, any debt forgiveness that you enjoy is considered income subject to the federal income tax. (If it was not, then we would all want our employers to issue us loans and then forgive the debt, rather than paying us salaries.) This provision, which was included in the Senate bill and also in the conference agreement, weakens this essential rule. It allows companies that have debt cancellation income to defer taxes on that income for five years and then pay the tax in increments over the following five years.

Congress has, perhaps with good reason, temporarily set aside concerns about balancing the federal budget. Stimulating the economy and stopping the downward spiral of reduced demand and layoffs has become a higher priority than raising enough tax revenue to pay for public services. But one provision in the stimulus bill would raise revenue (albeit a mere $7 billion, officially). This provision would rescind IRS Notice 2008-83, also called the "Wells Fargo ruling" after its largest beneficiary.

In October, the IRS issued this two-page notice declaring, with no authorization from Congress, that banks could ignore a section of the tax code enacted under President Reagan to prevent abusive tax shelters. In December, over a hundred organizations signed a letter to the House and Senate asking them to rescind the Wells Fargo ruling.

An online six-minute video from the American News Project (click here if you need the YouTube version) explains how Treasury officials under former President George W. Bush issued the Wells Fargo ruling with no legal authority and gave banks a hand-out beyond their lobbyists' wildest dreams.

A provision rescinding the ruling was included in both the House-passed bill and the Senate-passed bill and is included in the conference agreement.

The economic stimulus bill that the Senate approved today includes several tax cuts that are not in the stimulus bill approved by the House of Representatives two weeks ago and which should be excluded from the final bill that goes to the President.

The bill approved by the House of Representatives two weeks ago has a total cost of about $819 billion, while the cost of the Senate bill had grown last week to about $940 billion. A group of self-styled centrist Senators then put forth a compromise that took exactly the wrong approach to cutting down the costs: They mostly removed government spending that economists believe will stimulate the economy -- like aid to state governments, school construction, food stamps -- while they left in most of the regressive tax cuts that Senators have added to the bill.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice lists the six most regressive and ineffective tax cuts included in the Senate stimulus bill that are not in the House bill (or, in some cases, are much more limited in the House bill).

Legislation to kickstart the economy is badly needed. Lawmakers who are sincere in their desire to stimulate the economy in the most cost-effective manner should seek to exclude from the final bill these tax cuts, which economists believe will do little to boost consumer demand. They add $124 billion (according to official projections) to the cost of the Senate's stimulus bill compared to the House stimulus bill. The real cost of these provisions is considerably more.

Here are CTJ's worst six tax cuts in the Senate stimulus bill:

1. One-year AMT "patch"
2. Home buyers' tax credit
3. Deduction for automobile purchases
4. Suspension of taxes on UI benefits
5. Five-year carryback of net operating losses (NOLs)
6. Delayed recognition of certain cancellation of debt income

Read the CTJ Report: http://www.ctj.orgpdf/sixworsttaxcuts.pdf
Read the Summary: http://www.ctj.orgpdf/sixworsttaxcutssummary.pdf

The report also explains that some tax cuts could actually be effective in stimuluating the economy -- if they are extremely targeted to poor and working class families. The Making Work Pay Credit and the EITC expansion that appear in both the House and Senate bills accomplish this. So do the provisions in each bill to make the Child Tax Credit more available to poor families, but the report explains that the House provision does a much better job of this than the Senate provision.

A House-Senate conference will now attempt to work out the differences between the House and Senate bills and settle on a final bill, which President Obama wants to sign by the end of this week.

Senate Should Reject "Repatriation" Proposal that Will Be Offered as an Amendment to the Stimulus

In 2004, Congress did something that, it claimed, it would never do again. It allowed corporations that had shifted their profits offshore to "repatriate" those profits -- that is, bring them back into the United States -- and pay corporate income taxes on those profits at an almost nominal 5.25% rate instead of the normal 35% rate for corporate income.

In 2004, it was obvious to all that if we provided this sort of tax amnesty more than once, corporations would actually have an incentive to move their profits out of the United States. They would know to simply wait for the next amnesty, when they could bring those profits back and pay almost no taxes on them. So, lawmakers insisted that this wouldn't happen again, no matter how much corporate lobbyists begged.

Well, the corporate lobbyists are back. They argue that repeating the tax amnesty -- which would surely encourage corporations to shift even more profits into offshore tax havens -- will be an effective stimulus for the U.S. economy! When the Senate takes up its economic stimulus bill this week, some members will offer an amendment to include this second amnesty. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains what exactly is meant by "repatriation" and why it's exactly the wrong policy for America right now.

Read CTJ's report on the repatriation proposal.

On Friday, January 23, House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor (VA) presented their "Economic Recovery Plan" to President Obama. The Republican plan is based on income tax cuts for relatively well-off families and business tax cuts. As a brand new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains, it is unlikely to provide the needed boost to consumption that economists believe can come from either direct government spending or putting money in the hands of working class people who are likely to spend it quickly.

Less Than a Quarter of the House GOP's Tax Rate Reduction Proposal Would Go to the Poorest 60 Percent of Taxpayers

The House GOP plan proposes to reduce the two lowest individual income tax rates from 15% to 10% and from 10% to 5%. To get the maximum tax cut of about $3,400 from this rate reduction, taxpayers would have to have enough taxable income to reach the start of the third income tax bracket. For example, a married couple with two children would typically need to earn more than $100,000. That's considerably more than most people earn. In fact, only one in five of all taxpayers has enough income to reach the third income tax bracket and receive the full benefit of the proposed tax rate reduction.

On the other hand, the plan proposed by Democrats in the House of Representatives (which is scheduled to come to a floor vote today), delivers tax cuts to working families who don't pay federal income tax but pay a lot in payroll taxes. For example, the "Making Work Pay Credit" would give married couples with $8,100 or more in wages the full $1,000 credit provided in the bill. In order to have an equivalent benefit from the Republican rate reduction, a married couple (with two children) would have to have $46,000 of gross income. The House Democrats' plan would also expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which are smaller tax breaks in terms of revenue but are even more targeted to working families.

Read the new CTJ report.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice compares the tax cuts proposed as economic stimulus by the House Democrats to the tax cuts proposed by their Republican counterparts. The report includes both national and state-by-state figures showing the average tax cut and the share of total tax cuts that would be received by taxpayers in various income groups under the different proposals.

The report finds that the Democrats' proposal (H.R. 598) includes some tax cuts that are far more targeted to low- and middle-income people than any of the tax cuts included in the Republican alternatives. This is largely because H.R. 598 includes a new refundable credit (the Making Work Pay Credit) and expands two others (the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit) while the Republican alternatives do not. Working people who pay federal payroll taxes but do not earn enough to owe federal income taxes will only benefit from an income tax cut if it takes the form of a refundable credit. Many economists have argued that any effective stimulus policy would have to boost demand for goods and services by causing immediate spending -- and one way to do that is to put money in the hands of low- and middle-income people who are more likely than wealthy taxpayers to spend it quickly.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on the Democratic proposal, H.R. 598. Many of the provisions of this bill have wide support from progressive advocates. The Coalition on Human Needs is distributing a sign-on letter for organizations in support of the expansion in the Child Tax Credit. If you are authorized to sign on behalf on an organization in support of this provision, click here for more information.

Read the CTJ Report