What Rand Paul Fails to Understand about Apple’s Tax Dodging

During the May 21 Senate hearing on Apple’s tax practices, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said lawmakers should apologize for “bullying” the company and holding a “show trial,” and says he’s “offended by the tone” of the hearing. Senator Paul, who took the opportunity to call for a “repatriation holiday,” claims that the debate over tax reform should not include a discussion of the tax avoidance practices of a corporation like Apple.

As CTJ has explained, the hearing uncovered how Apple is shifting profits out of the U.S. and out of other countries and into Irish subsidiaries that are not taxed by any government. Senator Paul’s response is a non-sequitur: What Apple is doing is legal, therefore Congress should not debate whether or not its practices ought to be legal. 

Tax Reform Will Go Nowhere Unless We Know How Specific Companies Like Apple Avoid Taxes

Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), the chairman and ranking Republican of the subcommittee that investigated Apple, understand three basic facts that escape Senator Paul. First, our corporate tax system is failing to do its job of taxing corporate profits. Second, virtually no one in America can understand this until someone explains how individual corporations are dodging their taxes. Third, the corporations themselves will, quite naturally, lobby Congress to defend and even expand the loopholes that facilitate their tax dodging.

Once you understand these three facts, it becomes clear that the only path to tax reform is to explain to the public how certain big, well-known corporations are avoiding taxes.

An abstract debate about corporate tax dodging — a debate that doesn’t mention any specific corporations — is not likely to result in reform. Just look at President Obama’s approach. He first made his proposals to tighten the international corporate tax rules in May of 2009. The proposals made barely a ripple in the media at that time, and no one in Congress even bothered to put them in legislation.

On the other hand, the New York Times expose on GE’s tax dodging in March of 2011 was discussed by everyone from the halls of Congress to the Daily Show. CTJ’s big study of Fortune 500 companies’ taxes — including 30 companies identified as paying nothing over three years — was published in November of that year and is still cited today in debates over our broken tax code.

Senator Levin has legislation to crack down on corporate offshore tax avoidance — which includes several of the President’s proposals. Levin’s bill includes an Obama proposal — reform of the “check-the-box” rules — that Obama himself backed away from under pressure from corporations. (CTJ’s explanation of Levin’s hearing and report on Apple explains how the company took advantage of the current “check-the-box” rules.)

Senator Paul’s Solution: Facilitate More Tax Avoidance with a “Repatriation Holiday”

As CTJ explained last week, Senator Paul proposes a tax amnesty for offshore corporate profits, which proponents like to call a “repatriation holiday.” We explained that Congress tried this in 2004, and the result was simply to enrich shareholders and executives while encouraging corporations to shift even more profits offshore in the hope that Congress will enact more “repatriation holidays” in the future.

Senator Paul’s slight of hand during the hearing was impressive. He argued that instead of targeting Apple, the discussion should be about how to fix the tax system (assuming away the possibility that an explanation of Apple’s practices would facilitate that discussion), and then moved on to argue that the necessary fix is a repatriation holiday. In other words, leave Apple alone because its tax avoidance practices are legal, and instead let’s legalize even more tax avoidance.

This has generally been the position of Apple, which has lobbied for a repatriation holiday. Apple CEO Time Cook argued at the hearing that Apple would like a more permanent change to the tax code, one that would slash taxes (if not eliminate taxes) on offshore profits that are repatriated.

The truth is that corporations like Apple lobby for as many tax loopholes and breaks as they can get. We may see them as morally culpable. Or we may think it’s natural for people to ask for the very best deal they can get — just as children naturally argue for the latest bedtime possible and the largest quantity of ice cream possible. Either way, Senator Paul’s claim that America’s interests can be served by simply giving corporations what they ask for is absurd.

On May 21, top executives of Apple Inc attempted but failed to explain to a Senate committee why Congress should maintain or expand the tax loopholes that allow them to avoid U.S. taxes on billions of dollars in profits.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) issued a report on Apple’s tax practices and held a hearing to ask Apple executives and tax experts about the findings. (PSI has the power to subpoena companies to provide information that would otherwise not become public.)

A CTJ report published the day before the hearing explains how Apple’s public documents indicate that its offshore profits are in tax havens. PSI’s report and hearing have uncovered how Apple pulls this off.

Thanks to PSI’s efforts, we now know that Apple shifts U.S. profits to one of its non-taxable Irish subsidiaries through a “cost-sharing agreement” that gives the subsidiary the right to 60 percent of profits from its intellectual property, and that Apple also shifts profits from other foreign countries where it sells its product to its non-taxable Irish subsidiaries.

The Irish subsidiaries have few if any employees and don’t do much of anything, but Apple Inc has a huge incentive to claim that a lot of its profits are generated by these subsidiaries because Ireland is not taxing them. So, Apple uses the “cost-sharing agreement” to convert U.S. profits to non-taxable Irish profits for tax purposes, and likewise manipulates transfer-pricing rules and other tax provisions to turn profits from other countries into untaxed Irish profits.

Avoiding U.S. Corporate Taxes Through “Cost-Sharing Agreement”

Under the cost-sharing agreement, an Irish subsidiary that had no employees until 2012 (it now has about 250) has the rights to the majority of profits from Apple’s intellectual property, even though virtually all of that intellectual property is developed by Apple Inc (the parent company) in the United States. Since almost all of the actual manufacturing of Apple’s physical products is outsourced to other companies, this intellectual property is the real source of Apple’s profits.

It’s absurd to think of the so-called “cost-sharing” as an “agreement,” because the parties are Apple Inc and a subsidiary that it owns and controls — in other words, an agreement between Apple and itself. As the tax experts testifying at the hearing explained, there is no way that Apple would enter into such an “agreement” with an entity that it did not completely control.

Because the Irish subsidiary is controlled and managed by Apple Inc in the United States, Irish tax law treats it as a U.S. corporation not subject to Irish tax. But because the Irish subsidiary is technically incorporated in Ireland, the U.S. treats it as an Irish corporation, on which U.S. taxes are indefinitely “deferred.” Thus, neither nation taxes the profits that Apple has shifted to its Irish subsidiary.

So despite the fact that Apple does virtually all of the work responsible for its global profits in the U.S., it gets to tell the IRS that the majority of its profits are in Ireland, where they are not subject to Irish tax, while indefinitely “deferring” U.S. taxes on those profits.

Avoiding Taxes Outside the Americas by Manipulating Transfer Pricing Rules

The end of PSI’s report informs us that in 2011, Apple’s tax-planning “resulted in 84% of Apple’s non-U.S. operating income being booked in ASI,” which is one of Apple’s Irish subsidiaries. That’s because Apple also shifts potentially taxable profits from other countries into Ireland.

All the Apple products sold outside North and South America are sold by Apple subsidiaries that purchase them, apparently at inflated prices, from the Irish subsidiaries. This aggressive use of “transfer pricing” (on paper) means that Apple’s subsidiaries in these other countries reported only tiny taxable profits to their governments. That explains why Apple reports foreign effective tax rates in the single digits.

Of course, transactions between different Apple subsidiaries are all really transfers within a single company. Transfer pricing rules are supposed to make Apple and other multinational corporations conduct these paper transfers as if they were transactions between unrelated companies. But the tax authorities clearly find these complicated rules impossible to enforce.

The Bottom Line

So despite the fact that almost all of Apple’s profits ought to be taxable in the United States, most of its profits are not taxable anywhere.

Policy Solutions

Ending the rule that allows a U.S. corporation like Apple to indefinitely defer U.S. taxes on offshore profits would mean that none of Apple’s schemes to avoid taxes would be successful. We have argued before that the only way to completely end the incentives for corporations to shift profits into tax havens is to repeal deferral.

Short of full repeal of deferral, Congress could close some important tax loopholes that Apple and other multinational corporations use to make their schemes work. For example, PSI explains how Apple uses a tax regulation known as “check-the-box” to simply tell the IRS to disregard many of its offshore subsidiaries. This allows Apple to continue deferring U.S. tax on the payments made from one subsidiary to another, which circumvents a general rule that deferral is not supposed to be allowed for such “passive,” easily moved income.

One of the recommendations of the committee is to reform the “check-the-box” rules, which was also a proposal in President Obama’s first budget. (This proposal was left out of subsequent White House budgets, apparently in response to corporate lobbying). 

PSI also suggests that the U.S. tax foreign corporations that are controlled and managed in the U.S. (like Apple’s Irish subsidiaries), that Congress strengthen rules governing transfer pricing, and makes several other recommendations to block the type of tax avoidance techniques used by Apple.

Virtually None of Its $102 Billion Offshore Stash Has Been Taxed By Any Government

Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to testify on May 21 before a Congressional committee on the $102 billion in profits that the company holds offshore. Citizens for Tax Justice has a new analysis of Apple’s financial reports that makes clear that Apple has paid almost no income taxes to any country on this offshore cash.

That means that this cash hoard reflects profits that were shifted, on paper, out of countries where the profits were actually earned into foreign tax havens — countries where such profits are not subject to any tax.

As CTJ explains, the data in Apple’s latest annual report show that the company would pay almost the full 35 percent U.S. tax rate on its offshore income if repatriated. That means that virtually no tax has been paid on those profits to any government.

Read the report.

First it was Mitt Romney, and now two more aspiring public servants are in the spotlight for questionable tax maneuvers – Penny Pritzker, President Obama’s Commerce Secretary Nominee, and Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate, Gabriel Gomez.  The complex tax avoidance strategies exercised by both these two candidates for federal office demonstrate the stunning extent to which wealthy individuals of all stripes can play by a different set of tax rules than everyone else.

Avoiding Every Last Penny of Taxes

While many wealthy families go to great lengths to avoid taxes, the Pritzker family (most famous for it’s ownership of the Hyatt hotel chain) is unique in its role as “pioneers” in the use of offshore tax shelters. Many of its existing offshore trusts were set up as long as five decades ago, and some have allowed the family to continue benefitting from tax loopholes that have long since been closed.

As the graphic below from a 2003 Forbes story details, one of the primary ways the Pritzker family uses offshore trusts to avoid taxes is by having income from their businesses funneled into offshore trusts. Those trusts then pay debt service to a bank, owned by the family trust, that loans that money right back to the business. The upshot is that all the taxable profits disappear and the family wealth accumulates unabated. A more recent Forbes article looking at the Pritzker family fortune notes that these trusts were not at the margin but rather “played a substantial role in the growth of the Pritzker fortune.” The same article notes that this fortune makes up the vast majority of Pritzker’s $1.85 billion empire and has allowed 10 members of the Pritzker family to earn a spot on the list of Forbes 400 richest people in America.

When the New York Times asked Penny Pritzker for her thoughts on the ethical implications of her family’s use of offshore trusts, she remarked that the trust was set up when she was only a child, after all, and that she does not control how the offshore trusts are administered. Her continued vagueness on these issues makes it likely that she will face more questions about her views of offshore tax avoidance more generally next week when she goes before the Senate for her confirmation hearing.

While Pritzker’s personal involvement with her family’s most infamous tax avoidance legacy is unclear, it is clear that she has actively used tax avoidance strategies in her own professional and private life. For example, a family member in this Bloomberg News profile from 2008 recounts one of her very first assignments working for Hyatt, which was to set up a like-kind property exchange to help avoid taxes on a property owned by Hyatt.

It turned out Penny was a natural at this particular tax avoidance scheme, in which a company takes deductions for the purported depreciation of their property and then sells the property at an appreciated price, but avoids paying capital gains tax by swapping the property for another like-kind property. (Originally created for use by farmers trading acreage, this tax break is a perfect example of a loophole in the tax code that is abused by companies and should be eliminated (PDF).)

In her personal finances, Penny Pritzker has run into criticism for making 10 appeals to lower the property tax assessment for her mansion in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Like many wealthy taxpayers, Pritzker is able to retain lawyers who, through repeated appeals, have been able to save her an estimated $175,905 (PDF), even though their appeals have only succeeded half the time.

Gabriel Gomez and the Façade of Charitable Donations

While not on the same scale, according to the Boston Globe, U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez claimed a $281,500 income tax deduction in 2005 for “pledging not to make any visible changes to the façade of his 112-year-old Cohasset home” because the value of such an agreement is considered a charitable deduction by federal law. The only problem is that local laws already prohibit he and his wife from making any changes to the exterior of their home, meaning that his “agreement” to leave the façade alone is more like complying with local laws rather than a choice, so it may not have an actual “value” that is deductible.

In fact, just five weeks after Gomez claimed this deduction, the IRS listed the abuse of historic façade easements as one of its “Dirty Dozen” tax scams. Moreover, the organization with which Gomez made the agreement, the Trust for Architectural Easements, has been criticized by the IRS, Department of Justice, and Congress for encouraging tax avoidance. Altogether the IRS estimates that the Trust cost American taxpayers $250 million in lost revenue.

Fortunately for Gomez, the IRS did not challenge his use of this deduction, as it has with hundreds of others. If they had done so, they likely would have rejected the deduction and Gomez would have had to pay thousands in back taxes and an additional penalty. For his part, Gomez’s lawyer argues that the restrictiveness of the agreement goes further than local zoning laws, but it appears unlikely that the additional restrictions are so great as to justify such a substantial deduction.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, an opponent of efforts to crack down on offshore tax havens, is stepping up his efforts by introducing FATCA repeal, and is extending his help to tax-dodging corporations by proposing a repatriation amnesty.

Senator Paul’s Campaign for Individual Tax Cheaters: Repeal of FATCA

A year ago we explained that Senator Paul was blocking an amendment to a U.S.-Swiss tax treaty designed to facilitate U.S. tax evasion investigations:

The US and Swiss governments renegotiated their bilateral tax treaty as part of the 2009 settlement of the UBS case. That case charged the Swiss mega-bank UBS with facilitating tax evasion by US customers. Under the settlement agreement, UBS paid $780 million in criminal penalties and agreed to provide the IRS with names of 4,450 US account holders.

Before it could supply those names, however, UBS needed to be shielded from Swiss penalties for violating that country’s legendary bank-secrecy laws. The renegotiation of the US-Swiss tax treaty addressed that problem by providing, as most other recent tax treaties do, that a nation’s bank-secrecy laws cannot be a barrier to exchange of tax information.

Today Senator Paul is still blocking such treaties. Taking his efforts a step further, he has introduced a bill to repeal a major reform that clamps down on offshore tax evasion. That reform is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was enacted in 2010 as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. Senator Paul says he opposes it because of “the deleterious effects of FATCA on economic growth and the financial privacy of Americans.”

His arguments are entirely unfounded and the only thing he is accomplishing is to help those illegally hiding their income from the IRS. FATCA basically requires taxpayers to tell the IRS about offshore assets greater than $50,000, and it applies a withholding tax to payments made to any foreign banks that refuse to share information about their American customers with the IRS.

For a country with personal income tax (like the U.S.), that kind of information-sharing is indispensible to tax compliance, as the IRS stated in its most recent report on the “tax gap”:

Overall, compliance is highest where there is third-party information reporting and/or withholding. For example, most wages and salaries are reported by employers to the IRS on Forms W-2 and are subject to withholding. As a result, a net of only 1 percent of wage and salary income was misreported. But amounts subject to little or no information reporting had a 56 percent net misreporting rate in 2006.

So why shouldn’t foreign banks that benefit from the business of U.S. customers report the assets they deposit to U.S. tax enforcement authorities? Without such reporting, people who have the means to shift assets offshore are able to evade U.S. income taxes, while the rest of us are left to make up the difference.

Senator Paul’s Repatriation Amnesty Would Help Corporations That Use Tax Havens

The same week he proposed repeal of FACTA, Senator Paul introduced a bill that would reward corporations for shifting profits overseas. What the corporations are doing is not actually illegal, but in some ways that is exactly the problem, and the Senator’s tax amnesty proposal would make it worse.

The general rule under current law is that U.S. corporations are allowed to “defer” paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits until those profits are “repatriated” (until they are brought back to the U.S.). A significant tax benefit to corporations, “deferral” actually encourages them to disguise their U.S. profits as foreign profits generated in a country that has no corporate tax or a very low corporate tax — in other words, a tax haven.

Whereas now U.S. corporations do have to pay the U.S. corporate tax on those profits upon repatriation (minus whatever amount they paid to the other country’s government, to avoid double-taxation), a repatriation amnesty would temporarily call off almost all the U.S. tax on those offshore profits. Paul’s proposal would subject the repatriated profits to a tax rate of just five percent.

A similar repatriation amnesty was enacted in 2004 and is widely considered to have been a disaster. A CTJ fact sheet explains (PDF) why proposals for a second repatriation amnesty should be rejected:

■ Another temporary tax amnesty for repatriated offshore corporate profits would increase incentives for job offshoring and offshore profit shifting... One reason why the Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that a repeat of the 2004 “repatriation holiday” would cost $79 billion over ten years is the likelihood that many U.S. corporations would respond by shifting even more investments offshore in the belief that Congress will call off most of the U.S. taxes on those profits again in the future by enacting more “holidays.”

■ The Congressional Research Service concluded that the offshore profits repatriated under the 2004 tax amnesty went to corporate shareholders and not towards job creation. In fact, many of the companies that benefited the most actually reduced their U.S. workforces.

Completely ignoring JCT’s findings, Senator Paul claims that the tax revenue generated from taxing the repatriated profits (even at a low rate of 5 percent) could be used to fund repairs of bridges and highways.

We’d like to assume that Senators know you can’t use a tax proposal that loses revenue to pay for something. We would like to assume that, but, sadly, we can’t.  

Photo of Rand Paul via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Why do 56 percent of Americans dislike or even hate doing their taxes? A recent Pew Research poll found that it’s not for any of the reasons anti-tax activists like Grover Norquist would like you to believe. As Pew explains:

Among those who dislike or hate doing their taxes, most cite the hassles of the process or the amount of time it takes: 31% say it is complicated, requires too much paperwork or they are afraid of making mistakes, while 24% say it is inconvenient and time-consuming. A much smaller share (12%) says they dislike doing their taxes because of how the government uses tax money. Just 5% of those who dislike or hate doing their income taxes say it is because they pay too much in taxes.

So what if it weren’t a time-consuming hassle? You have probably heard that a “flat tax” or “fair tax” is the solution, but we do not need to turn our progressive tax system upside-down (PDF) to simplify tax collection.

The real solution to the hassle problem is called “return-free filing.” It doesn’t just reduce your work to fill out a postcard, it eliminates it altogether.

Under one version of a return-free filing system, the IRS would send each taxpayer their own tax return, already filled out and with their taxes owed calculated. The taxpayer can either approve it, or choose to fill out their own return.

Even with our complicated system of tax breaks, experts estimate that as many as 54 percent of taxpayers would no longer need to go through the trouble of filling out their own tax return under a return-free filing system. According to one estimate, moving to this system could save Americans over $2 billion in tax prep costs and 225 million hours in tax prep time each year.

A return-free tax system is more than just theoretical. The reality is that thirty-six countries (PDF) like Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom already use a return-free filing system to greater or lesser extents. In fact, you do not have to look any further than California, which uses this approach in its ReadyReturn program. According to a study of ReadyReturn (subscription required), participants in the program spent about 80 percent less time filing and had an error rate of a tenth of the level of comparable taxpayers.

The benefits of return-free filing have been lauded by members of both major political parties. For example, the comprehensive tax reform plan co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Dan Coats in 2011 includes a return-free filing system dubbed “Easyfile,” and both President Barack Obama and former President Ronald Reagan have sung the praises of return-free filing.

While return-free filing gets accolades from across the political spectrum, it has some powerful opponents thwarting its implementation in the U.S. An exceptional article from ProPublica explains that the most prominent opponents of this system are tax preparation companies like H&R Block and Intuit (the maker of TurboTax), which stand to lose a lot of money if taxpayers no longer need help preparing tax returns. In the past five years, these companies have spent $20 million lobbying Congress to ignore the benefits to taxpayers of return-free filing.

There are debates, however, as to whether the act of filling out tax returns “promotes civic reflection,” making us somehow more engaged in our government, perhaps more critical as well, in the same way that jury duty reminds us we are all participants in democracy.

And while Duke University Law Professor Lawrence Zelenak has been a proponent of this argument, in his recent book he suggests that “the fiscal-citizenship-promoting character of the return-filing process might well be even more pronounced” under a return-free filing system.  Echoing the Pew findings, he suggests that eliminating the “negative feeling engendered by grappling with complexity or by paying a surrogate” might allow Americans to focus more clearly on the larger picture and benefits of government.

While there is no shortage of critical tax reforms we should implement to improve our tax system, moving toward a return-free tax system would be an important step toward bolstering “the bond between taxation and citizenship” as Zelenak put it in a recent New York Times editorial, and making “filing Form 1040 an act of civic pride rather than a bureaucratic hassle.”

The Brewers Association, a lobbying group for craft beer brewers, has been trying to make a case for a reduction in the federal excise tax on small U.S. craft brewers. The group supports legislation – the Small BREW Act – introduced earlier this year which would cut in half the excise tax on the first 60,000 cases of beer a craft brewer produces. Significantly, the bill would also quietly redefine what the federal tax code considers a “craft brewer” to include companies producing up to 6 million barrels of beer a year. (Right now, companies making less than 2 million barrels a year are eligible for an already-existing, smaller excise tax break on the first 60,000 barrels.) This would have the effect of giving beer tax breaks to some companies that few Americans would think of as “craft brewers.”

That would make the Boston Beer Company, maker of tasty brews under the Sam Adams label which enjoyed more than $95 million in US profits last year, a craft brewer and take a big bite out of its already low tax bill.

Over the past five years, the Boston Beer Company has claimed $22 million in tax breaks for executive stock options, has cut its taxes by $9 million using a federal tax break for “domestic manufacturing” and it has even enjoyed millions of dollars in federal research and development tax breaks. The company’s effective tax rate on its $330 million in US profits over the past five years has been just 23 percent, well below the 35 percent corporate income tax rate. And in 2008, while it reported $16 million in US profits it managed not to pay a dime in federal income taxes on that income. (In fact, the company reported receiving a tax rebate of $2 million from Uncle Sam that year.)

Boston Beer would become eligible for “craft brewer” tax breaks under the proposed bill (courtesy of the Congressional Small Brewers Caucus). While the Boston Beer Company is certainly smaller than the two multinational giants it competes against (Anheuser-Busch Inbev and SAB Miller), the company with the ubiquitous Sam Adams products enjoys profits on a scale that dwarfs the true craft breweries dotting the American landscape.

At a time when Congress and the Obama administration are critically examining many of the unwarranted tax breaks that have been purchased with lobbying dollars over the years, one has to ask: are new tax breaks for a mid-sized tax-avoider beer company high on our national “to-do” list?

Some members of Congress are pushing ahead (or at least creating the appearance that they are pushing ahead) with tax reform without addressing the most important issue of the debate: revenue. As we have pointed out before, the $975 billion in tax increases called for in the recent Senate budget resolution would not even raise revenue high enough to fund the level of spending that Ronald Reagan presided over. To discuss addressing the tax code without raising any new revenue at all is simply absurd. 

Lack of Attention to Revenue in House and Senate

In the Ways and Means Committee, the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives, Republican chairman Dave Camp has made clear that he wants tax reform to be “revenue-neutral,” meaning loopholes and tax expenditures (subsidies provided through the tax code) may be reduced, but the revenue savings would all be used to offset the cost of reducing tax rates.

Camp split his committee members into working groups that spent several weeks focused on various tax issues and receiving comments from interested parties (dominated as usual by big business). The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) just published an enormous report summarizing different facets of the tax system and summarizing the comments and suggestions submitted to these working groups. The suggestions include everything imaginable, from reducing the tax expenditure for capital gains to boosting the tax expenditure for capital gains, from ending “deferral” of taxes on offshore corporate profits to exempting those profits completely with a territorial system.

But almost none of the suggestions summarized in the report actually touch upon the biggest question facing anyone trying to overhaul a tax system: How much revenue should we collect?

Meanwhile, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the tax-writing committee in the Senate, seems to believe that he can carry out a debate over tax reform without actually addressing how much revenue should be collected. A CTJ op-ed published last month criticized Baucus’s approach. We noted that

Democratic and Republican tax-writers are holding bipartisan talks to craft a tax reform bill, even though there is no agreement between the parties on what the basic goals of such reform ought to be. One party recognizes a need for more revenue while another has pledged to not raise more revenue. This would be like holding bipartisan talks on immigration reform — if one party supported a path to citizenship while the other party pledged to round up all undocumented immigrants and deport them without exceptions…

Some more recent comments from Senator Baucus have indicated that he at least might try to get some revenue from tax reform. He recently said during a hearing,

“We will close billions of dollars of loopholes. Some of this revenue should be used to cut taxes for America’s families and help our businesses create jobs, and some of the revenue raised in tax reform should also be used to reduce the deficit,” Baucus said. “It’s all about finding common ground.”

We’d feel better if Senator Baucus acknowledged that raising revenue should be the main purpose of tax reform because our most pressing need is revenue to fund public investments.

Deficit-Neutral Tax Reform Has No Place in a Plan to Address the Deficit

The most ridiculous idea aired recently is for Congressional Republicans to demand revenue-neutral tax reform in return for agreeing to President Obama’s request that the federal debt ceiling be raised.

The last time the Republican majority in the House of Representatives agreed to pleas of President Obama and the Senate to raise the debt ceiling, they demanded that the deficit be reduced by the sequestration that is in effect today. No revenue was raised in that deal.

Now, some Republican lawmakers are discussing extracting a different concession: an agreement that would provide a fast-track process to enact tax reform. But the tax reform they propose would be revenue-neutral (meaning it would be deficit-neutral). There is simply no logical connection between the deficits that require us to raise the debt ceiling and a tax reform that would do nothing to reduce those deficits.

Will “Dynamic Scoring” Paper Over the Revenue Question?

Some lawmakers have tried to confuse the debate by arguing that Congress should enact a tax reform that is revenue-neutral according to the revenue-scoring methods officially used by Congress but revenue-positive if Congress switches to a different method that they claim is more accurate. This method is known as “dynamic scoring,” which assumes that reducing tax rates increases incomes and profits so dramatically that the additional tax collected on the new income and profits would partially offset (or more than offset) the revenue lost as a result of the rate reduction. In other words, a tax cut (because it causes the economy to expand) could pay for itself or even raise revenue.

There is no evidence that the money channeled into the economy by reductions in tax rates expands the economy in this way. But even if we all agreed that it did, that would logically require us to agree that spending cuts could suck enough money out of the economy to have the opposite effect. But Chairman Camp and his colleagues support the spending cuts in the Ryan budget and would never want to admit that spending cuts have macroeconomic effects that blunt or even reverse any deficit-reduction that these lawmakers are trying to accomplish.

Members of Congress have a serious disagreement over revenue, and they can’t paper over it by using the gimmick of “dynamic scoring.” There is only one real resolution, and that’s to acknowledge a need for tax increases.

President Obama has proposed to limit the tax savings for high-income taxpayers from itemized deductions and certain other deductions and exclusions to 28 cents for each dollar deducted or excluded. This proposal would raise more than half a trillion dollars in revenue over the up­coming decade. 

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analyzes the proposal and models its effects on taxpayers nationally and state-by-state. Findings include:

• Only 3.6 percent of Americans would receive a tax increase under the plan in 2014, and their average tax increase would equal less than one percent of their income, or $5,950.
• The deduction for state and local taxes and the deduction for charitable giving together would make up just over half of the tax expenditures (deductions, etc.) limited under the proposal.
• Arkansas and West Virginia have the lowest percentage (1.6 percent) of taxpayers who would see a tax increase from this proposal; Washington, D.C. would have the largest percentage (8.9 percent) followed by Connecticut and New Jersey (both 6.7 percent).

Read the report.

There’s been some confusion in recent days about whether the 258 members of Congress who have signed Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” are allowed to vote in favor a bill that lets states collect sales taxes owed on purchases made over the Internet.  There is no reason for any confusion on this point.  Anybody with 15 seconds of free time and the ability to read the one sentence promise contained in the national pledge can see it’s completely irrelevant to the debate over online sales taxes:

I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Since federal income tax rates, deductions, and credits are altered exactly zero times in the online sales tax legislation set to be voted on by the Senate, Grover’s federal affairs manager is being less than truthful when she says that “there’s really not any way an elected official [who signed the pledge] can vote for this.”

There’s no doubt that Grover would be tickled pink to have gotten 258 of our elected officials to pledge opposition to improving states’ ability to limit sales tax evasion over the Internet.  For that matter, he would probably be even more excited to have gotten those officials to promise to vote against any increase in the estate tax, gasoline tax, or cigarette tax, as well as the creation of a carbon tax or a VAT.  But none of these things fall within the scope of the pledge, either, and it’s a shame that Grover and his spokespeople have shown no interest in being truthful on this point.

When Congressional tax writers signaled their intention to enact a new tax break for domestic manufacturing income in 2004, lobbyists began a feeding frenzy to define both “domestic” and “manufacturing” as expansively as possible.  As a result, current beneficiaries of the tax break include mining and oil, coffee roasting (a special favor to Starbucks, which lobbied heavily for inclusion) and even Hollywood film production. The Walt Disney corporation has disclosed receiving $526 million in tax breaks from this provision over the past three years, presumably from its film production work, and even World Wrestling Entertainment has disclosed receiving tax breaks for its “domestic manufacturing” of wrestling-related films.

But CTJ has now discovered, after poring over corporate financial reports, an example that may trump them all.

Silicon Valley-based OpenTable, Inc. provides online restaurant reservations and reviews for restaurants in all fifty states and around the world, connecting customers and restaurants via the Internet and mobile apps.  While members of Congress may enjoy how OpenTable can “manufacture” a last minute seating at their favorite Beltway watering hole, it’s hard to believe the company engages in any activity that most Americans would think of as manufacturing.

And yet OpenTable discloses in its SEC filing that the domestic manufacturing tax break reduced the company’s effective corporate income tax rate substantially recently, saving it about $3 million over the last three years.  Even as a small portion of the company’s overall tax bill, that $3 million is emblematic of the scores of absurd loopholes carved out of the corporate tax code.

President Obama has repeatedly proposed scaling back the domestic manufacturing deduction to prevent big oil and gas companies from claiming it, but we have argued that the manufacturing tax break should be entirely repealed. At a minimum, Congress and the Obama Administration should take steps to ensure that the companies claiming this misguided giveaway are engaged in something that can at least plausibly be described as manufacturing.

Let’s start with the facts. Every dollar invested in the IRS’s enforcement, modernization and management system reduces the federal budget deficit by $200. Here’s another metric. Every dollar the IRS “spends for audits, liens and seizing property from tax cheats” garners ten dollars back.

Can you say “return on investment?”

Here’s another fact. The IRS’s budget has been reduced by 17 percent since 2002 (per capita and adjusted for inflation), and that includes this year’s sequester cuts. To adapt to the $594.5 million in budget cuts required by the sequester, the IRS has announced it will be forced to furlough each of its more than 89,000 employees for at least five days this year. While deficit reduction is supposed to be the goal of the sequester, cuts to the IRS will probably increase the deficit because it’s the IRS, after all, that collects tax revenue.  In fact, one expert estimated recently that furloughing 1,800 IRS “policeman” positions could cost the Treasury – that is, all of us – some $4.5 billion in lost revenue.

Denied adequate resources over the years, the IRS has not been able to keep up with its current workload, let alone expand its work. For example, a new report on IRS enforcement found that the agency actually audited 4.7 percent fewer returns in 2012 than it did in 2011. Considering that the IRS typically recovers about 14 percent of the $450 billion of unpaid taxes in a single year with its current resources, by increasing IRS resources we stand to reap billions in additional revenue from noncompliant taxpayers.

The Obama Administration proposed in its fiscal year 2014 budget to increase the IRS’s budget to $12.9 billion, about $1 billion more than its 2012 budget, with about $5.7 billion of that going to enforcement.  This increase doesn’t go nearly far enough considering the substantial decline in its budget during the past decade, but it’s a small investment we’d be smart to make.

By now you've probably heard that the U.S. Senate is close to approving a bill that would allow the states to collect the sales taxes already owed by shoppers who make purchases over the Internet.  Currently, sales tax enforcement as it relates to online shopping is a messy patchwork, with retailers only collecting the tax when they have a store, warehouse, headquarters, or other “physical presence” located in the same state as the shopper.  In all other cases, shoppers are required to pay the tax directly to the state, but few do so in practice.  The result of this arrangement is both unfair (since the same item is taxed differently depending on the type of merchant selling it) and inefficient (since shoppers are given an incentive to shop online rather than locally).

Unsurprisingly, two of the strongest proponents of a federal solution to this problem have been traditional “brick and mortar” retailers that compete with online merchants and state lawmakers struggling to balance their states’ budgets even as sales tax revenues are eroded by online shopping.  But this issue has also turned anti-tax advocates, states without sales taxes, and even online retailers against one another in surprising ways, for reasons of ideology and self interest. 

Ideological Frenemies, Norquist and Laffer

Supply-side economist Arthur Laffer recently argued in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that states should be allowed to enforce their sales taxes on online shopping as a basic matter of fairness, so that “all retailers would be treated equally under state law.”  We completely agree with this point, but Laffer makes clear that his larger aim is to shore up state sales taxes in order to make cuts to his least favorite tax—the personal income tax. It’s no secret that Laffer wants states to shift toward a tax system that leans heavily on regressive sales taxes, but it’s harder to advocate for such a shift if the tax can be easily avoided by shopping online.

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform stands in direct opposition to Laffer on this issue.  Norquist has been “making the case on the House side of either seriously amending it or even stopping” federal efforts to allow for online sales tax enforcement.  But Norquist reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of the issue when he argues that out-of-state retailers should be free from having to collect sales taxes because “you should only be taxing people who can vote for you or against you.”  In reality, retailers aren’t being taxed at all—they’re simply being required to do their part in making sure their customers are paying the sales taxes already owed on their purchases.

Delaware vs. The Other No-Sales-Tax States

Four states levy no broad-based sales tax at either the state or local level: Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon and Senators from these last three states are generally not interested to helping other states enforce their sales tax laws. After all, why vote for a “new tax” if there’s no direct benefit to their own states’ coffers?

But Delaware’s senators see the issue differently, as both Sen. Carper and Sen. Coons voted in favor of the bill.  In fact, Carper introduced his own bill for collecting tax on e-purchases years ago, explaining it this way: “The Internet is undermining Delaware's unique status” because “part of Delaware's attraction to tourists is that people can come and shop until they drop and never have to pay a dime of sales tax.”

Amazon vs. Other Internet Retailers

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that online retailers as a group have opposed legal requirements that their customers pay sales taxes on their purchases since it means these e-retailers would have to charge and collect that tax.  Some companies, however, like Netflix, have long collected (PDF) those sales taxes, even without a legal requirement to do so. But most have clung to online sales tax evasion as a way to undercut traditional retailers by up to 10 percent (or more, depending on the sales tax rate levied where the buyer is located).

One recent exception is eBay, which appears to have seen the writing on the wall and has pivoted from opposing the bill to watering it down – and it’s deploying its 40 million users as an army of online lobbyists to that end.

But it is Amazon that stands apart from other online retailers in fully supporting a federal solution to the patchwork of state laws and the growing number of deals it has finally had to strike with states. The company’s reason is likely two-fold.

First, Amazon has a “physical presence” in a growing number of states and plans to continue its expansion in order to make next-day-delivery a reality for more of its customers. As a result, Amazon will be legally required to remit sales taxes in more states in the future and will find itself at a competitive disadvantage if other online retailers remain free from sales tax collection requirements.  Second, Amazon processes a large number of sales for other merchants through its website and collects sales taxes on behalf of some of them – for a fee.  Amazon’s sales tax collection services could become much more lucrative in the future if more of the merchants it partners with are required to collect sales taxes.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee which oversees tax legislation, announced today that he is retiring when his term closes at the end of 2014. Many people are asking how this will affect the tax reform that he hopes to shepherd through his committee. Last week, CTJ published an op-ed criticizing Baucus’s approach to tax reform.

Democratic and Republican tax-writers are holding bipartisan talks to craft a tax reform bill, even though there is no agreement between the parties on what the basic goals of such reform ought to be. One party recognizes a need for more revenue while another has pledged to not raise more revenue. This would be like holding bipartisan talks on immigration reform — if one party supported a path to citizenship while the other party pledged to round up all undocumented immigrants and deport them without exceptions…

A recent profile of Baucus's efforts informs us that “Baucus declined say whether he views tax reform as a way to raise revenue, although he did not rule it out. Instead, he said, that divisive question should be left unanswered until committee members have a chance to study areas of reform where they are more likely to agree.”

Read the op-ed.

Read CTJ's response to the Tax Foundation's claim that the U.S. has a high corporate tax rate.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont recently appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and disputed the claim by the Tax Foundation that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax in the world. Senator Sanders is right, the Tax Foundation is wrong.

CTJ explains that the effective corporate tax rate (the share of profits that corporations pay in taxes) is what matters, and the effective tax rate for U.S. corporations is quite low. The Tax Foundation relies on flawed studies to argue otherwise. For example, one study cited by the Tax Foundation excludes corporations paying a negative tax rate — in other words, excludes corporate tax dodgers. Obviously this will result in a higher estimated effective tax rate.

Read CTJ's full response.

A revealing new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that in 2011, the US government spent as much on corporate tax expenditures as it collected in corporate taxes. According to the report, 80 tax expenditures (exceptions, deductions, credits, preferential rates, etc.), cost the Treasury $181 billion in corporate tax revenue, which is the same as the total amount the Treasury collected in corporate taxes in 2011.

While the study looked at 80 corporate tax expenditures, over three-quarters of the revenue loses ($136 billion) were attributed to the four largest expenditures: accelerated depreciation, deferral of foreign income, the research credit, and the domestic production activities deduction. (CTJ has explained before that repealing these provisions would raise massive amounts of revenue.)

Making matters worse, 56 of the 80 tax expenditures that GAO looked at were used by individuals as well as corporations, resulting in an additional loss of $125 billion in revenue from the individual income tax. This happens because many corporate tax breaks can be used by businesses taxed under the individual income tax (the personal income tax), such as partnerships, S-corporations and other “pass-through” entities.

The report also revealed that more is spent on corporate tax expenditures in the budget areas of Commerce and Housing, International Affairs, and General Purpose Fiscal Assistance than is spent in direct federal outlays. For example, GAO found that the government spends only $45.7 billion in direct federal outlays for International Affairs, while spending $50.8 billion on corporate tax expenditures on this same budget function. Similarly, GAO concluded that one-third of the corporate only tax expenditures “appear to share a similar purpose with at least one federal spending program.”

These expenditures account for major U.S. corporations paying an average effective tax rate of half the 35 percent statutory rate, and often even zero in federal income taxes; elimination of these tax breaks should be the top priority for lawmakers looking to replace the sequester or reduce the deficit. In fact, a coalition of 515 groups recently called on Congress to repeal or reduce corporate tax expenditures as a way to raise revenue (as opposed to enacting corporate tax reform that is “revenue-neutral”). As Representative Lloyd Doggett (R-TX), who requested the GAO study, explained, “Corporate America did not contribute a nickel to the fiscal cliff deal that meant higher taxes for many Americans [and] it is reasonable to ask corporate America to contribute a little more toward closing the budget gap and to the cost of our national security.”

These corporate tax expenditures get nothing like the public scrutiny that direct spending is subject to. But tax expenditures for corporations are just like subsidies provided to corporations in the form of direct spending because Americans have to make up the costs somehow. That’s true whether it’s that bundle of earmark-like tax extenders that gets quietly renewed every year or two, or the rule allowing corporations to indefinitely defer taxes on foreign profits, or the massive breaks for depreciating equipment. All this is the spending of ordinary taxpayers’ dollars – and it merits the same critical attention.

EVENT ADVISORY/PHOTO-OP FOR APRIL 15, 2013

BILLBOARD TRUCK IN WASHINGTON, DC ASKS, DO YOU PAY MORE TAXES THAN MAJOR CORPORATIONS?

 Citizens for Tax Justice Mobile Billboard to Visit Dupont, K Street, Capitol Building and National Capitol Post Office over Eight Hour Day

 Washington, DC – “Do you pay more Federal Income Taxes than Facebook, Southwest Airlines, GE, Pepco and other Giant Corporations? Yes You Do!” These words are splashed across a red, white and blue, ten by twenty foot rolling billboard that will be seen by thousands of tourists, food truck customers, pedestrians and commuters on Monday April 15^th, courtesy of Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ). CTJ’s April 11 report, “Ten Reasons We Need Corporate Tax Reform,” supports the billboard’s text that will be circulating around DC between 11 AM and 7 PM on Tax Day.

The billboard route maximizes visibility for passersby and access for news cameras, in particular at its final stop affording a visual of taxpayers visiting the Post Office. The route and schedule is divided into four parts, all times Eastern, primarily in NW DC. Some stops scheduled, others by request.

11 AM – Noon: Circling Dupont Circle and pulling off the Circle onto 19^th St. NW (in front of Dupont Metro, Krispy Kreme, Front Page bar) at 11:30 for cameras and as needed.

Noon – 2 PM: Lunch at K Street Parks - Farragut Sq, McPherson Sq, Franklin Park. Route is rectangle of K Street NW to 13^th Street to I (Eye) Street to 17^th Street. Stops at I (Eye) near 15^th/Vermont at 1:00 and 1:30 PM and as needed.

2 – 3 PM: US Capitol Building Loop - 3^rd St NW/SW to Independence Avenue to 2^nd St SE/NE to Constitution Ave. No stops scheduled but as needed will be on 3^rd Street NW between Madison/Jefferson Streets.

3:30 – 7 PM: National Capitol Post Office, 2 Mass Ave, NE at North Capitol Street. Billboard will park kitty corner from Post Office entrance (doors on North Capitol), adjacent to Sun Trust Bank, in sight of Dubliner bar (F Street). Depending on parking, truck’s 5-minute loop passes busy tourist sites as it runs up North Capital, onto Louisiana Ave NE onto New Jersey Ave NW and back on Mass Ave NW for media availability.

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Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation (www.ctj.org).

Two new analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice demonstrate that the richest Americans still are not shouldering a disproportionate share of taxes and that the poor are still not avoiding them, despite stories that are commonly told every year around Tax Day.

The first is Who Pays Taxes in America in 2013?, a fact sheet we release each year. It examines all the taxes paid by Americans (all federal, state and local taxes) and finds that people in all income groups do pay taxes (despite claims to the contrary by Mitt Romney and others) and that the tax system overall is just barely progressive.

The second analysis is our six-page report called New Tax Laws in Effect in 2013 Have Modest Progressive Impact. This goes into more detail and explains that the tax code has not changed in 2013 despite recent headlines about unprecedented taxes on the rich.

For example, Americans in all income groups are paying more than they would pay if Congress had just extended the tax laws in effect in 2012, but the share of taxes paid by the top one percent has risen only slightly. The richest one percent, who will receive 21.9 percent of America’s income in 2013, will pay 24 percent of all the taxes in 2013. If, instead of enacting the “fiscal cliff” deal that allowed some tax cuts for the rich to expire, Congress had just extended the 2012 tax laws, then the richest one percent would pay 23.1 percent of all the taxes in 2013.

In other words, the “fiscal cliff” deal made our tax system slightly – not dramatically –more progressive.

Just in time for Tax Day 2013, our quarterly newsletter Just Taxes is arriving in mailboxes this week. This edition features original articles discussing the fallacies of anti-tax legislation in state legislatures, Facebook's tax avoidance schemes, the release of ITEP's new report, Who Pays? and highlights of ITEP and CTJ's recent press coverage. Starting this year, we are putting back issues of Just Taxes online, and you can now browse editions from the past nine years.  

Just Taxes is a provided as a service to our current donors – who make our work possible – so we’re not making this special content available until six months after publication. (The current issue, for example, will be posted in October.) So to make sure you receive the most up-to-date edition, please make a contribution to CTJ or you can choose to make a tax-deductible contribution to ITEP.  And thank you for all the ways you show support for our work.

The largest revenue-raising proposal put forth by President Obama, which is expected to be among the proposals the White House plans to release next week, would limit the tax savings of each dollar of certain deductions and exclusions to 28 cents. CTJ's new report on the President's proposal examines who would be affected and also breaks down the composition of the tax expenditures limited under the proposal.

For example, the report finds that Obama's proposal, which would only apply to married couples with AGI above $250,000 and singles with AGI above $200,000, would affect just 2.4 percent of taxpayers in 2014. The deduction for state and local taxes would make up over a third of the tax expenditures limited, and the deduction for state and local taxes along with the charitable deduction would, together, make up over half of the tax expenditures limited under the proposal.

Read the report.

Are economically disadvantaged families in the US likely to reverse their fortunes anytime soon? Not according to a new report by the Brookings Institution, which found that growing economic disparities between Americans are becoming increasingly permanent and irreversible. In other words, the study confirms that disadvantaged Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to move up the income ladder, while at the same time the position of the well-off is increasingly secure.

Brookings also found that between 1987 and 2009 the US tax system only “partially mitigated” the increase in income inequality and that it was not enough to “sufficiently alter its broadly increasing trend.” This result is not all that surprising given that the overall (combined state and federal) tax system is barely progressive, meaning that it can only have a small redistributive impact.

While many countries have taken dramatic steps to reduce income inequality, the US has allowed income inequality to grow so extreme that it now has the fourth highest level of income inequality in the developed world. Looking at the low end of the scale, the US Census Bureau found that over 46 million (PDF), or 1 in 6, Americans were below the poverty line in 2011 (the most recent year for which data is available).

But don’t expect a revolution just yet. Most Americans are wholly unaware of how off track our economic system has gotten. For example, as the viral video “Wealth Inequality in America” explains, there is a huge disconnect between the actual distribution of wealth, the distribution of wealth as the public perceives it, and the distribution that the public believes is desirable.

According to the study (PDF) on which the video was based, Americans believe that the top 20 percent hold only 58 percent of the country’s wealth and that under an ideal system, the top 20 percent would own just 32 percent of the wealth. The reality, however, is that the top 20 percent actually own about 84 percent of the country’s wealth. Consider, for example, that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune alone own as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.

One of the best ways to combat rising economic inequality and increase economic mobility would be to enact progressive tax reforms and use the additional revenue raised to pay for critical investments in education, healthcare, and other areas that are needed to improve the economic mobility of lower and middle income Americans.

This week the Supreme Court heard arguments on two cases looking at the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Specifically, the cases were about measures that ban recognition of gay marriage by the federal government and the state of California. At the federal level, the Court heard about the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bans the recognition of a same-sex marriage and entails over 1,100 different laws that consider marriage status when determining an individual’s rights and responsibilities.  And some of those laws determine how much that individual owes in taxes.

The discriminatory effect of the DOMA, which was signed into law in 1996, in tax law is at the center of United States v. Windsor. The original petitioner in the case, Edith Windsor, was forced to pay $363,000 more in federal estate taxes because under DOMA, her same-sex marriage is not recognized for tax purposes and thus is not eligible for the “surviving spouse” estate tax exemption available to heterosexual spouses. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Windsor and declares DOMA unconstitutional, it would mean that same-sex marriages will be recognized by the federal government for all purposes, including taxes.

While such a ruling would have a relatively small impact in terms of the estate tax since almost no one pays it, there are many other federal tax provisions that do affect most married couples. The New York Times, for example, points to the fact that DOMA prevents same-sex spousal health benefits from being treated as a tax-exempt benefit, therefore increasing the tax bill of individual same-sex couples by a few thousand dollars each year. 

Perhaps the most widespread tax impact would be on same-sex spouses who are not currently allowed to file their federal tax returns jointly. According to an analysis by CNN and tax experts, some same-sex spouses may currently be paying as much as $6,000 in extra taxes each year because of DOMA. While many same-sex spouses could receive a substantial tax benefit from filing jointly, they could also end up paying more in taxes due to the infamous marriage penalty, depending on each spouse’s level of income.

There is also a larger fiscal effect to consider. A 2004 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report (PDF) estimated that federal recognition of same-sex marriage would actually reduce the deficit by roughly $450 million each year, through a combination of higher revenues and lower outlays. In other words, ruling DOMA unconstitutional would not only end same-sex marriage discrimination in the tax code and other parts of federal law, but would also have the bonus effect of slightly reducing the deficit.

On Saturday, the Senate approved the budget resolution that was crafted by Budget Chairman Patty Murray of Washington State, by 50 votes. (The resolution would have received 51 votes if New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg not been absent due to an illness.)

The most important implication of this vote is that a majority of Senators agreed that Congress should raise $975 billion over a decade and cut spending by the same amount, rather than attempt to achieve deficit-reduction entirely through spending cuts. Indeed,  the Senate rejected several amendments that would have reduced or eliminated the revenue increase.

The description of the plan from Murray’s budget committee staff explains that revenue would be raised by “closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the tax code that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.” But a great deal is left to be determined because, as we explained earlier, this budget resolution offers no details on which loopholes or wasteful tax expenditures might be limited.

Murray Plan in the Senate a Stark Contrast to the Ryan Plan in the House

In any event, the Senate budget resolution is so different from the resolution approved by the House (the plan crafted by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan) that it’s difficult to imagine how a Senate-House conference committee could ever “reconcile” or “merge” the two documents.  As CTJ has already demonstrated, the Ryan plan would provide millionaires an average net tax cut of at least $200,000, and possibly much more.

Senate Would Give States the Right to Require Online Retailers to Collect Sales Taxes

The Senate approved, by a vote of 75 to 24, an amendment to allow states to require out-of-state remote retailers (like Internet retailers) to collect sales taxes from their customers. This amendment has no binding effect but it shows that there are enough votes in the Senate to pass important legislation (the Marketplace Fairness Act) that would give states this authority.

Currently, a state is allowed to require a retailer to collect sales taxes from its customers only if the retailer is “physically present” in the state. This creates an unfair advantage for a company like Amazon, which is selling its products remotely, over a company like Target, which is physically present (because of its stores) almost everywhere it does business. Even worse, states are losing more and more revenue as more commerce happens online — a trend that can only increase with time.

It’s worth repeating (as CTJ has explained before) that this proposal would not actually increase taxes, but would only facilitate the collection of taxes that are due (but rarely paid) under current law.

Many Other Amendments Have Little Meaning

Votes taken on amendments during the Senate budget debate are generally not binding. Their greatest significance is that they show whether or not enough votes can be gathered to pass a given proposal in the Senate. For example, the vote on allowing states to require remote retailers to collect sales taxes demonstrates that there are more than the 60 votes needed in the Senate to approve that proposal when it comes to the floor as an actual bill.

But other amendments are not as helpful in determining support for actual legislation, and can be best described as posturing with little real meaning.

For example, the Senate rejected a Republican-sponsored amendment to repeal the estate tax, but then approved by 80-19 an amendment sponsored by Democratic Senator Mark Warner “to repeal or reduce the estate tax, but only if done in a fiscally responsible way.”

The Senate’s approval of this amendment does not indicate that an actual bill to reduce or repeal the estate tax would get 60 votes because an actual bill would either have to include specific provisions to offset the costs, or the bill would clearly increase the deficit. There have been votes on such bills in the Senate many times and they have never received the needed 60 votes, much less 80 votes.

To take another example, the Senate voted 79-20 to repeal a tax on medical device manufacturers that was enacted as part of health care reform. This was one of the taxes enacted with the idea that companies that would benefit from health care reform should share in its costs. The budget amendment says that legislation should be passed to repeal the tax “provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit.”

An actual bill to repeal this tax would require some sort of provisions to offset the cost, or it would increase the deficit, and Senators voting in favor would have to be ready to support those offsetting provisions or the increase in the deficit. It’s not obvious that any such bill would get 60 votes.

There are many other examples of amendments that were mostly about posturing, and many would be terrible policy if they were enacted as actual legislation. The estate tax, for example, has been gutted in recent years even though it’s the one tax that addresses concerns about income inequality and the richest one percent pulling away from everyone else. And the medical device tax was part of the intricate compromise that was necessary to enact virtually universal health coverage without increasing the budget deficit. It’s unfortunate that so many Senators feel a need to pander to the special interests who want to repeal these taxes.

Actor John Cleese, most famous for his central role in the British comedy group Monty Python, has decided to move back to Great Britain from Monaco, after concluding that the tax benefits of moving to the tax haven last year were not worth it after all. The actor’s return to Great Britain provides a high profile counterpoint to the false narrative that “high” taxes are driving wealthy people to migrate to low-tax jurisdictions, like Florida in the United States, or like Monaco, Russia or Bermuda for the globe trotting set.

The quest for a lower tax rate has not proven to be as much of a factor for wealthy individuals as anti-tax advocates would have you believe. Several studies confirm this, including a recent academic analysis based on actual tax returns that concludes the effect of tax rates on migration is “negligible” between the different tax jurisdictions in the United States.

What anti-tax advocates ignore is the fact that taxes actually play a very small role in an individual’s decision where to live, especially compared to factors like employment opportunities, family and friends, housing and even weather. In addition, lower taxes may actually discourage migration if they result in lower quality government services (a well-funded Ministry of Silly Walks  maybe especially close to John Cleese’s heart for example). What wealthy person wants to move to a jurisdiction with poor public schools, dirty streets and parks, and inadequate law enforcement?

The real lesson is that non-tax benefits of living in a location usually outweigh higher taxes, even in cases where the individual could save substantial sums of money by moving elsewhere. A recent case in point? The billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s decision not to move to Puerto Rico, despite the fact that doing so would have allowed him to avoid billions of dollars in capital gains taxes. In other words, Paulson has indicated that he’d just as soon keep paying billions more in taxes for the advantages of living in New York City. Colorful anecdotes and threats aside, the holy grail of tax codes ends up being the one that allows for a quality of life worthy of millionaires – and everybody else.

There’s a lot of talk in the halls of Congress about reforming the federal tax code, but few people think about how that might impact state and local governments and their ability to raise enough revenue to fund the services their residents use on a daily basis.

As the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives examined this issue on Tuesday, CTJ’s partner organization ITEP submitted written testimony to clear up some little-understood points.

The federal tax system accommodates the taxing authority of state and local governments in a few different ways, which could be altered for better or worse, depending on what Congress does.

The Deductions for State and Local Taxes

For example, the federal personal income tax allows a deduction for taxes one pays to state and local governments. ITEP’s testimony points out that in many ways this is one of the most justified of the federal tax deductions and therefore should not be eliminated. Most deductions are for spending that the taxpayer has control of — like home mortgage interest or charitable giving — but this is not true of state and local taxes. It makes more sense to think of state and local taxes as reducing the amount of income a taxpayer has to pay federal taxes.

Perhaps more importantly, eliminating the deduction would make state and local governments more hesitant to tax the incomes of wealthy residents (who know that the deduction offsets part of those taxes). This tax revenue is badly needed as the U.S. has underinvested in infrastructure, education and other goods that are largely funded with state and local taxes.

State and Local Bonds

Another accommodation made by the federal tax system is its exclusion of state and local bond interest from taxable income. State and local governments can borrow at lower interest rates, because the interest payments they make are not taxable for the bondholders (who are thus willing to accept lower rates than are paid on ordinary bonds).

But, as ITEP’s testimony explains, the current tax subsidy is inefficient because some of the revenue given up by the federal government falls into the hands of very high-income bond-holders rather than the state and local governments that the exclusion is ostensibly supposed to help.

The Obama administration has a proposal that would remedy this by reviving Build America Bonds. These bonds were available for two years under the economic recovery act Obama signed into law in 2009, and are designed differently so that they support state and local government projects without creating a windfall for the wealthy.

Marketplace Fairness Act

Congress has additional opportunities to accommodate state and local governments’ taxing authority. For example, we have written recently that anyone who lives in a state with a sales tax and purchases something online owes sales tax on that purchase. But states and local governments are not allowed to require remote sellers to collect these sales taxes, which they can and do require of retailers who are physically present in the state. The Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) is a bill in Congress that would fix this.  

The MFA is a common sense bill. It would not even increase taxes but only facilitate the collection of the sales taxes that people already owe but usually fail to pay.

This week, members of Congress will receive a visit from the tax vice presidents of major corporations that have come together in the so-called Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE) Coalition, a corporate lobbying group pressing lawmakers to reduce the corporate tax rate.

U.S. Corporate Tax Is Actually Lower than What Multinational Corporations Pay Abroad

The first thing you should know about the RATE Coalition is that their rhetoric about the U.S. having a high corporate tax is nonsense. The U.S. statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent, which RATE wants to reduce, is not as important as the effective corporate tax rate — the percentage of profits that corporations actually pay in taxes after accounting for all the loopholes and breaks that lower their tax bills.

This is explained in a CTJ report appropriately titled, “The U.S. Has a Low Corporate Tax.” The report also explains that CTJ examined most of the Fortune 500 companies that were consistently profitable from 2008 through 2010 and found that two-thirds of those with significant offshore profits actually paid a higher effective tax rate in the other countries where they did business than they paid in the U.S.

RATE Agrees with CTJ on Closing Tax Loopholes, Disagrees about What To Do with the Savings

The second thing you should know about the RATE Coalition is that they agree with all of the findings of CTJ’s studies documenting corporate tax avoidance due to corporate tax loopholes. They simply disagree with us about what should be done with the revenue savings if Congress ever closes those loopholes.

The RATE Coalition cites CTJ at length in a recent post on its website:

"Because of these reductions [due to corporate tax breaks], the effective tax rate is closer to 18.5 percent on average, according to Washington, D.C. think tank Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), making the rate one of the lowest of any developed country…

A 2011 report on 280 corporations conducted by CTJ found that nearly a third paid no federal income tax in at least one of the three previous years, while 30 of those surveyed recouped more federal dollars than they paid in taxes in one of the previous three years…"

The RATE Coalition’s website admits that “corporate tax base-broadeners [provisions to close corporate tax loopholes] should be on the table.” But they seem to believe that all of the revenue saved from such loophole-closing should be given right back to corporations in the form of a reduction of their corporate income tax rate.

Citizens for Tax Justice has explained (in this fact sheet, for example) that most, if not all, of the revenue savings from closing tax loopholes should be used to fund the public investments that build the American economy and the American middle-class.

CTJ is not alone in holding this position. For example, in May of 2011, U.S. Senators and Representatives received a letter from 250 organizations, including organizations in every state, calling on Congress to close corporate tax loopholes and use the revenue saved to address the budget deficit and fund public investments. The 250 non-profits, consumer groups, labor unions and faith-based groups called for a corporate tax reform that raises revenue. In December of 2012, over 500 organizations from around the country joined a similar letter that was sent to each member of Congress.

Tax-Dodging Corporations like Boeing Extremely Influential in Washington

Despite polling showing that most Americans want our corporations to pay more in taxes and despite the evidence that these companies are not paying very much now, Congress and the administration are taking seriously proponents of a “revenue-neutral” reform of the corporate income tax.

Lawmakers of both parties and even President Obama have shown an alarming level of deference to these companies.

For example, CTJ’s figures show that Boeing, one of the corporations that is a member of the RATE Coalition, paid nothing in net federal income taxes from 2002 through 2011, despite $32 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits. In fact, Boeing has actually reported more than $2 billion in negative total federal taxes over that period.

Amazingly, this did not stop President Obama from telling a crowd at a Boeing plant in Washington State that revenue saved from closing offshore tax loopholes “should go towards lowering taxes for companies like Boeing that choose to stay and hire here in the United States of America.”

President Obama has also signed onto the overall goal of the RATE Coalition, a “revenue-neutral” reform of the corporate tax, which CTJ has criticized in detail.

It’s hard to know how much longer members of Congress and the President can ignore the opinions of the majority of Americans who want corporations to pay more in taxes. Perhaps as more people feel the effects of the sequester and other service cuts supposedly necessary to balance they budget, the more they’ll demand to know why their elected leaders are allowing so much corporate tax revenue to go uncollected.

Our report on Paul Ryan’s most recent budget notes that it includes a package of specific tax cuts but claims to maintain current law revenue levels, without specifying how. Our report assumes tax expenditures would have to be limited, as all of Ryan’s previous budget plans propose explicitly, to offset the costs of his tax cuts.

It is possible that Ryan doesn’t believe he would have to make up all of those costs, because he might believe that at least some of his tax cuts pay for themselves. In other words, Ryan might rely, at least partly, on “supply-side” economics.

One of the main ideas behind supply-side economics is that reducing tax rates will unleash so much productivity and investment and so much growth in incomes and profits that the tax collected on those increased incomes and profits will make up for the revenue loss from the reduction in tax rates.

The section of Ryan’s budget plan on tax reform cites, and is nearly identical to, a letter from Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and the Republican members of his committee explaining that they seek a tax reform that would “lead to a stronger economy, which would create more American jobs and higher wages. More employment and higher wages would lead to higher tax revenues which would simultaneously address both the nation's economic and fiscal reforms.” The letter goes on to say that they “will continue to oppose any and all efforts to increase tax revenue by any means other than through economic growth.”

Having Failed to Win the Argument Over the Income Tax Cuts and Capital Gains Tax Cuts, Supply-Siders Now Turn to Corporate Tax Cuts

Of course, if there was any possibility that we could actually get more revenue by paying less in taxes, we would all support that. The idea is so appealing that many lawmakers cling to it despite overwhelming evidence that it’s wrong.

Anti-tax lawmakers and pundits have tried to use the supply-side argument for several different types of tax cuts.

For example, the George W. Bush administration had the Treasury investigate whether or not the Bush income tax cuts would pay for themselves, and the Treasury reported back that, sadly, they would not.

To take another example, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has been obsessed for several years with the idea that income tax breaks for capital gains (if not other types of personal income tax cuts) pay for themselves. But the evidence shows that revenue from taxing capital gains rises and falls with the stock market and the overall economy, not changes in tax policy.

And yet another example is the apparent campaign underway now to convince Congress and the public that cuts in the corporate tax rate pay for themselves. On the same day as Ryan released his budget plan, the Tax Foundation released a report claiming that reductions in corporate tax rates pay for themselves. Two days earlier, Arthur Laffer, the leading proponent of “supply-side” economics, made the same argument in a U.S.A. Today column. (See ITEP's critiques of Laffer's other work as junk economics.)

The Tax Foundation report is particularly telling. The Tax Foundation explains that their “dynamic” estimates assume that changing the corporate tax rate affects the economy. But stop and think about what this means exactly. They are essentially feeding assumptions into a model and then reporting the result.

The effect of taxes on the economy is complicated, especially when you consider that taxes fund public investments (like infrastructure and education) that enhance economic growth by enabling businesses to profit.

The Tax Foundation has fed their model assumptions about the effects of taxes on the economy and assumptions about how significant those effects are. If they assumed that cutting corporate tax rates had a negative impact or only a small positive impact on the economy, then their model would conclude that these tax cuts do not pay for themselves. But they assume a large positive impact on the economy, and their model therefore concludes that such tax cuts do pay for themselves.   

Some Members of Congress Seek “Dynamic Scoring” for Tax Proposals

It is unclear that proponents of supply-side economics will be any more successful with corporate income tax cuts than they have been with other types of tax cuts. But there is a real danger because anti-tax lawmakers often demand that Congress’s process of estimating the revenue effects of tax proposals be altered to take supply-side economics into account.

In other words, some lawmakers demand that the revenue estimating process assume that tax cuts cause economic growth, which can in turn offset at least part of the revenue loss — meaning tax cuts can at least partially pay for themselves.

Using this type of “dynamic scoring,” as it is often called, would be particularly manipulative. For one thing, even if we believed that tax cuts putting money into the economy boosts growth enough to partially offset the costs, then it’s equally logical to assume that spending cuts taking money out of the economy would reduce growth enough to limit the amount of deficit reduction they achieve.

But of course Paul Ryan and Dave Camp, who are championing a budget plan that includes massive spending cuts, do not suggest that the estimating process be altered to assume that such effects on the economy limit the amount of savings achieved. These are not the type of “dynamic” effects they have in mind.

The bottom line on the revenue proposals in the three budget plans in Congress today can be stated simply: The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s plan (for which CTJ provided some estimates) is sensible. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan is absurd, and Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray’s plan is in the middle.

As our new report explains, Paul Ryan promises a specific set of tax cuts but promises to maintain current law revenue levels, meaning some unspecified reduction or elimination of tax expenditures must take place. Our report explains that the richest Americans would see a net tax decrease under this plan even if they must give up all the tax expenditures that Ryan has put on the table. And if the richest Americans pay less, then obviously someone else must pay more, in order to meet Ryan’s goal of revenue-neutrality.

The other two budget plans at least recognize the need for more revenue. Some have suggested that Ryan is softening his stance on revenue because he accepts the overall revenue level projected under current law, which is more than he accepted in the past. But the current law revenue level is entirely inadequate and untenable.

Here’s why. Ryan’s plan notes that under current law, federal revenue will equal 19.1 percent of GDP (19.1 percent of the overall economy) in 2023, and observers have noted that this is more than his previous budgets would have allowed. But this level of revenue would not have balanced the budget even during the Reagan administration, when federal spending ranged from 21.3 percent to 23.5 percent of GDP.

Chairman Murray’s plan would raise revenue by $975 billion over a decade, so that federal revenue will equal 19.8 percent of GDP in 2023. The plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) would raise revenue by $5.7 trillion, so that revenue will reach 21.8 percent in 2023. In other words, only the Progressives would come close to funding the type of spending that Reagan presided over.

It’s helpful to think about a given budget plan’s projected revenue as a percentage of GDP for the purpose of comparison, but one should not overstate the usefulness of this number. Chairman Ryan has often talked as though the goal of the budget process is hitting a certain percentage, rather than fairly raising enough revenue to pay for the public investments that actually build the middle-class and the country.

Most Americans probably don’t care what revenue is as a percentage of GDP as long as the revenue collected is enough to adequately fund the schools they send their kids to, maintain the highways they drive to work on, and keep their health care costs from bankrupting them.

Ryan’s budget clearly slashes funding for anything that would address any of those issues. That’s what happens if you balance the budget in a decade without raising any revenue.

The Murray Plan

There are many good things to say about Senator Murray’s plan, in that it calls for badly needed tax increases and better-designed spending cuts to replace the sequestration (the scheduled cuts of over $1.2 trillion over the decade).

The Murray plan also makes the case for more revenue, explaining that the projected current law revenue is lower, as a percentage of GDP, than it was during the last five times the budget was balanced (going all the way back to 1969). It also explains that the level of revenue it envisions is still less than was proposed in the Simpson-Bowles plan and the other plans that lawmakers calling themselves “centrists” claim to admire.

But the Murray plan does not specify what tax increases or spending cuts would be acceptable. The plan says it would raise revenue by “closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the tax code that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations,” which is certainly moving in the right direction for those of us who believe that the overall tax system is not asking very much from wealthy individuals or from corporations.

The Murray budget plan would use the reconciliation process (the process that avoids filibusters in the Senate) to pass legislation raising the promised $975 billion, and it does specify that the progressivity of the tax code must be maintained. But the plan does not specify what the tax increases would be. The plan explains how tax expenditures like deductions and exclusions benefit the rich, but fails to mention the most regressive tax expenditure of all, the preferential rate for capitals gains and dividends. The plan explains how corporations avoid taxes through offshore tax havens, but does not suggest fixing the problem by ending the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” their offshore taxes, and does not even suggest rejecting proposals for a “territorial” system that would exacerbate the problem.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Plan

The CPC plan addresses all of these issues, repealing the enormously regressive capital gains tax preference and closing several loopholes used to avoid taxes on capital gains, repealing “deferral” and explicitly rejecting a territorial system, introducing new tax brackets for high-income individuals and many very specific proposals that have been championed by Citizens for Tax Justice. No one will agree with every provision in the CPC budget plan, but it is certainly a plan for people who want to have substantive discussions about what Congress should actually do.

The plan’s list of tax provisions range from huge (raising over a trillion dollars by ending far more of the Bush tax cuts than were allowed to expire under the fiscal cliff deal) to small (ending the Facebook stock options loophole) to very small (eliminating write-offs for corporate jets).

Even supporters of Murray’s plan should find the CPC plan useful because it provides a list of proposals that can be used to fill in some of the blank spots in the Murray plan.

Read CTJ's new report on the latest budget plan from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan’s budget plan for fiscal year 2014 and beyond includes a specific package of tax cuts (including reducing income tax rates to 25 percent and 10 percent) and no details on how Congress would offset their costs, all the while proposing to maintain the level of revenue that will be collected by the federal government under current law.

The revenue loss would presumably be offset by reducing or eliminating tax expenditures (tax breaks targeted to certain activities or groups), as in his previous budget plans.

CTJ's new report find that for taxpayers with income exceeding $1 million, the benefit of Ryan’s tax rate reductions and other proposed tax cuts would far exceed the loss of any tax expenditures. In fact, under Ryan’s plan taxpayers with income exceeding $1 million in 2014 would receive an average net tax decrease of over $200,000 that year even if they had to give up all of their tax expenditures.

Because these very high-income taxpayers would pay less than they do today in either scenario, the average net impact of Ryan’s plan on some taxpayers at lower income levels would necessarily be a tax increase in order to fulfill Ryan’s goal of collecting the same amount of revenue as expected under current law.

The “sequester” that went into effect on March 1^st is another clear indication of the stranglehold that anti-tax zealots still have over Washington. While lawmakers across the political spectrum (and particularly those outside the Beltway) oppose the sequester’s $85 billion in across-the-board cuts, the failure to reach a deal to replace these cuts rests entirely with anti-tax lawmakers who have blocked any agreement that would include any revenue increases at all.

The primary argument made to justify this anti-tax position is that the fiscal cliff deal already raised a substantial amount of revenue; they’re saying the President "already got" his tax increase.  According to the official scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office however, the fiscal cliff deal actually reduces revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade because it made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, renewed a slew of special interest tax breaks for a year, and extended some expanded refundable tax credits for five years.

Even if you accept that the Fiscal Cliff “raised” $620 billion in revenue (measured against what would have happened if Congress had extended all the tax cuts instead of 85 percent of them), the reality is that having anything close to a balanced approach to deficit reduction should include raising a whole lot more revenue. This may be news to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who recently asked “When is the president going to address the spending side of this?” But Congress has already enacted $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue raised by the fiscal cliff deal. If the sequester is allowed to stay in effect, or is replaced entirely by spending cuts, the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases will rise to as high as 5-to-1.

For his part, President Obama has offered a plan that would replace the sequester with $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, including $1,130 billion in spending cuts and $680 billion in revenue increases. The President is proposing to raise about $583 billion of the $680 billion in revenue by limiting the tax savings of each dollar of certain deductions and exclusions to 28 cents.

President Obama’s plan, however, does not ask for nearly enough revenue to replace the trillions lost by making the Bush tax cuts permanent, or to even make the level of revenue increases equal to the level of spending cuts enacted during his first term. In fact, if Congress enacted President Obama’s plan as is, it would still mean that well over $2 in spending cuts will have been enacted for every $1 in revenue increases. 

The fairest approach would be to replace the entirety of the sequester cuts with new revenue. To accomplish this, lawmakers should not only limit deductions and exclusions as President Obama is proposing, but should also consider raising hundreds of billions of dollars more by eliminating the tax breaks and loopholes that allow wealthy individuals and corporations to shelter their income from taxation.

Taking a step back, it’s simply unjustifiable to proceed with devastating spending cuts that would reduce already meager unemployment benefits by eleven percent, or deny aid to as many as 750,000 women and children, just to preserve exorbitant, unwarranted tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and profitable corporations.

A group of so far undisclosed corporations are forming a lobbying coalition called Let’s Invest for Tomorrow (LIFT) to press Congress to enact a “territorial” tax system. The coalition should be named Let’s Invest Elsewhere (LIE), because that’s exactly what American multinational corporations would be encouraged to do under a territorial tax system.

A “territorial” tax system is a euphemism to describe a tax system that exempts offshore corporate profits from the U.S. corporate tax.

U.S. corporations are already allowed to “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits until those profits are brought back to the U.S. This creates an incentive for U.S. corporations to shift operations (and jobs) offshore or just disguise their U.S. profits as offshore profits so that U.S. taxes can be deferred. Completely exempting those offshore profits from U.S. taxes would obviously increase the incentives to shift jobs and profits offshore.

A CTJ report from 2011 explains these problems in detail and concludes that Congress should move in the opposite direction by ending “deferral” rather than adopting a territorial tax system. The stakes are getting higher each year as U.S. corporations hold larger and larger stashes of profits offshore. (A recent CTJ paper finds that 290 of the Fortune 500 have reported their profits held offshore, which collectively reached $1.6 trillion at the end of 2011.)

The Public Opposes Territorial Tax Proposals – But Will Congress Listen?

In a world where politicians actually did what voters wanted, we would not have to worry that this coalition might actually succeed in its goal of bringing about a territorial tax system, which the public would clearly oppose.

For example, a survey taken in January of 2013 asked respondents, “Do you approve or disapprove of allowing corporations to not pay any U.S. taxes on profits that they earn in foreign countries?” 73 percent of respondents said they “disapprove” and 57 percent said they “strongly disapprove.” The same survey found that 83 percent of respondents approved (including 59 percent who strongly approved) of a proposal to “Increase tax on U.S. corporations’ overseas profits to ensure it is as much as tax on their U.S. profits.”

And yet, it’s unclear that lawmakers are paying attention to the interests or opinions of ordinary Americans.

It is true that Vice President Biden went out of his way at the Democratic National Convention to criticize the territorial system proposed by Mitt Romney. And it’s also true that the “framework” for corporate tax reform released by the White House in February of 2012 refused to endorse a territorial system.

But the framework only rejected a “pure territorial system.” CTJ pointed out that the time that probably no country has a “pure territorial system,” so this does not provide much assurance or guidance.

Meanwhile, it has long been rumored that many of the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee (the Senate’s tax-writing committee) favor a territorial system.

Republican lawmakers, for their part, have long fully endorsed a territorial system. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp made public his proposals for a territorial system in October 2011. That very day, CTJ released a letter signed by several national labor unions, small business associations and good government groups opposing Camp’s move, but the response from lawmakers was relatively muted.

Perhaps more disturbing, at his recent confirmation hearings, the new Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, appeared open to the idea of a territorial system.

Similar Corporate Lobbying Coalition Failed to Get a Temporary Exemption for Offshore Profits (Repatriation Holiday)

Some readers will remember that during 2011 and 2012 a group of corporations calling itself WIN America pushed for an tax amnesty for offshore profits (which they preferred to call a “repatriation holiday.”) The coalition was made up of companies who believed that Congress might not be naïve enough to give them the much bigger prize, a territorial system. As explained in a CTJ fact sheet, a repatriation holiday would temporarily exempt offshore profits from U.S. taxes, while a territorial system would permanently exempt those offshore profits from U.S. taxes, and would therefore cause even greater problems.

WIN America did give up and disband. But that could be largely because influential lawmakers like Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are indicating that the bigger prize, a territorial system, is within reach.

Complexity Helps the Lobbyists and Lawmakers Who Hope the Public Does Not Catch On

It may be that politicians remain open to tax proposals that the public hates because the issues involved are so complicated that they believe no one is paying attention. This makes it vital to call attention to the effects a territorial system would have on ordinary Americans.

The issues are admittedly complicated. For example, Americans have been presented over and over with a very simple story about how the U.S. has a corporate tax that is more burdensome than the corporate taxes of other countries, and that our companies need new rules that make them “competitive” with global competitors.

The reality is very different and much more complicated. While the U.S. has a relatively high statutory tax rate for corporations, the U.S. corporate tax has so many loopholes that most major multinational corporations seem to be paying a lower effective tax rate in the U.S. than they pay in the other countries where they have operations. CTJ’s major 2011 report on corporate taxes studied most of the profitable Fortune 500 companies and found (on pages 10-11) that among those with significant offshore profits (making up a tenth or more of their overall profits) two-thirds actually paid a lower effective tax rate in the U.S. than in the other countries where they operated.

On the other hand, there are a number of countries that have extremely low corporate tax rates or no corporate tax at all – mostly very small countries with little actual business activity – where U.S. companies like to claim their profits are generated, in order to avoid U.S. taxes. These are the offshore tax havens that exploit the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. If the U.S. completely exempts these profits from U.S. taxes (in other words, enacts a territorial system) these incentives will be greatly increased.

This is confirmed by a recent report from the Congressional Research Service finding that in 2008, American multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their $940 billion in overseas profits in the five very small tax-haven countries, even though only four percent of their foreign workforce and seven percent of their foreign investments were in these countries. In contrast, the five “traditional economies,” where American companies had 40 percent of their foreign workers and 34 percent of their foreign investments, accounted for only 14 percent of American multinationals’ reported overseas’ profits.

These statistics are outrageous and demonstrate that U.S. corporations are engaging in various accounting tricks in order to make it appear (for tax purposes) that their profits are generated in countries where they won’t be taxed. The LIFT coalition will count on the fact that this is simply too difficult for ordinary people to understand – which makes educating the public about this more important than ever.

PetersonPyramid.org

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), creator of the indispensible wiki, SourceWatch, recently launched a new wiki resource allowing users to explore the funding, leadership, partner groups and lobbyists that make up the Campaign to Fix the Debt. This resource reveals Fix the Debt for what it really is: another coordinated push by large corporations and billionaire Pete Peterson to force Congress to pass large and unneeded cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

We’d be remiss if we failed to also mention Fix the Debt’s naked duplicity in pushing for massive cuts to critical programs while simultaneously pushing for additional tax breaks for its many corporate backers.  Using data from Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), CMD exposes the audacity of some of 151 corporate backers of Fix the Debt by showing that many of them, such as Boeing, General Electric and Verizon, are already paying less than nothing in taxes.

Biz Vizz

371 Productions, the creator of the PBS documentary, “As Goes Janesville,” has launched a corporate transparency website and iPhone app called BizVizz, which provides consumers with easy access to financial information about America’s largest corporations. BizVizz uses CTJ’s corporate tax data to reveal that our broken corporate tax system allows the makers of many of our everyday products to get away with paying little – or sometimes nothing – in income taxes. One especially cool feature of the app allows the user to snap a picture of a product logo and get instant information on how much the company paid in federal taxes.

BizVizz includes other data, too. It shows how major corporations obtain their low tax rates because it includes data from the Sunlight Foundation on how much each corporation gave to politicians in campaign contributions. The other category of data BizzVizz includes is from Good Jobs First, listing subsidies corporations get from state and local governments – subsidies that come straight out of the tax dollars the rest of us pay in.

A new report from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) explores the shortcomings and potential reforms of tax breaks that are intended to expand access to postsecondary education. “While delivering student aid through the tax system is a ‘second best’ strategy,” the report argues, “because Congress has chosen to deliver nearly half of non-loan student aid this way, it is essential to make it work better."

It’s hard to disagree. The report notes that the confusing collection of tax breaks for postsecondary education cost $34.2 billion in 2012, almost as much as the $35.6 billion spent on Pell Grants. But, whereas Pell Grants target lower-income households that could not otherwise afford college, the tax breaks target relatively well-off families who will usually send their children to college with or without any tax incentive to do so.

As the report explains, “…the percentage of high school completers of a given year who enroll in two- or four-year colleges in the fall immediately after completing high school… was 52 percent for low-income families (bottom 20 percent), 67 percent for middle-income families (middle 60 percent) and 82 percent for high-income families (top 20 percent…).” In other words, higher-income families might send their children to college no matter what, while student aid could make the difference between going to college or not going to college for lower-income people. 

Improve and Expand the Best Education Tax Break, Ditch the Others

But not all tax breaks for postsecondary education are the same. Some are more targeted to those who really need them than others, although none are nearly as well-targeted to low-income households as Pell Grants, as illustrated in the bar graph below.

The graph shows that the most regressive of the tax breaks is the deduction for tuition and related fees, followed by the Lifetime Learning Credit (LLC) and the deduction for interest payments on student loans.

One proposal offered in the CLASP report would expand the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), represented by the blue bar above, which at least reaches low-income families not helped by the other tax breaks. The costs of the expansion would be offset by eliminating the deduction for tuition and fees, the LLC and the deduction for student loan interest.

In addition to better targeting tax breaks for postsecondary education, this reform would also reduce confusion among families as they try to figure out what aid is available for college. A 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office found that over a fourth of taxpayers eligible don't take advantage of any tax benefits for education, and those who do use them often don't use the most advantageous tax break for their situation.

Things Will Get Worse if Congress Doesn’t Act

The AOTC, the most progressive of the education tax breaks (or perhaps it’s better described as the least regressive of the education tax breaks) was signed into law by President Obama in 2009 and extended several times, but was never made permanent. The New Year’s Day deal enacted to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” extended the AOTC through 2017. If Congress fails to act before then, it will expire and its precursor, the less targeted Hope Credit, will come back into effect.

The biggest reason why the AOTC is better targeted to low-income families than the Hope Credit is the fact that the AOTC is partially refundable. The working families who pay payroll taxes and other types of taxes but earn too little to owe federal income taxes will benefit from an income tax credit only if it is refundable, like the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The proposals described in the CLASP report would expand the refundability of the AOTC, among several other reforms.

The only thing worse than giving Amazon an unfair advantage over local businesses is creating that advantage by facilitating tax evasion.

And that’s exactly what the Supreme Court did in the early 1990s when it decided that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution barred state and local governments from requiring out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes from their customers. Essentially, the court decided that a business without a “physical presence” in the state could not be required to collect sales taxes from customers the way that a company with a physical store in your state is required to collect sales taxes on whatever you buy there.

If you live in a state with a sales tax and you buy a product online from a company that has no physical presence in your state, you do owe sales tax on that purchase — but the state cannot make the online retailer collect it from you. You are supposed to pay the tax directly to the state (technically this tax is called a “use tax”). But this rule is obviously unenforceable and as a result most online buyers never pay that tax.

The Solution: The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013

The Supreme Court’s decision does allow for Congress to explicitly authorize states to require these retailers (retailers with no physical presence in the state) to collect sales taxes, and this is the goal of a bill introduced in the House and Senate last week, the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) of 2013.

The MFA would essentially undo the effect of the Supreme Court decision for those states that adopt a minimal set of common rules (which mostly involve harmonizing sales tax rules for taxing jurisdictions within the state's borders). Twenty-four states have already joined what is called the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), which includes a common set of sales tax rules, and would be authorized to require sales tax collection immediately under the MFA. Other states would be authorized if they meet the minimal standards set out in the bill.

Who Can Defend Tax Evasion?

The legislation has Republican and Democratic cosponsors in the House and Senate. This is not as surprising as it seems, given that the bill would not raise taxes but merely allow states to require retailers to collect the sales taxes that are already due.

It is difficult for opponents of the law to defend the current situation, which would basically be a defense of tax evasion. Opponents usually resort to claiming that it’s simply too difficult for online retailers to figure out what taxes would apply in the many different taxing jurisdictions where their customers are located.

But, as the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has explained, new technology, combined with the harmonized sales tax rules under SSUTA, would make it relatively easy for internet retailers to determine what sale taxes apply in a customer’s jurisdiction. We know this because major retailers that have a “physical presence” in numerous states, like Best Buy and Barnes and Noble, already collect sales taxes on sales made over the Internet, in addition to those made inside their physical stores. Similarly, Amazon collects sales tax on behalf of certain merchants located all around the country that sell via its website, though it mostly refuses to do so on items it sells directly.

Netflix’s CEO summed up the reality of the alleged tax complexity problem when he said, “We collect and provide to each of the states the correct sales tax. There are vendors that specialize in this... It’s not very hard.”

Increased Chances for Passage

The MFA has been introduced in various forms in previous Congresses, but there is reason to think that its chances of passage are greater than before. One reason is that sponsors have settled on a high exemption level — $1 million. While it seems ridiculous that a retailer could make $950,000 in sales in a year without being required to collect sales taxes from its online customers, this change will placate those concerned about the bill’s effect on “small businesses.”

Another reason the chances for passage are increasing is the changing nature of retail business. As we continue to charge ahead into the digital age, it’s becoming undeniable that a sales tax based only on retailers with a physical presence is simply not adequate for the 21^st century.

Former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, co-chairs of President Obama’s ill-fated fiscal commission, have a new proposal for a “grand bargain” to reduce the budget deficit. Their newest idea is to raise less revenue than they suggested in their original proposal and rely more on cuts in public services and public investments. They have absolutely no policy rationale for this whatsoever, but state quite explicitly that they are proposing a new plan to adjust for the political positions of President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

This might come as a surprise to the many observers of Bowles and Simpson, including many of their admirers in Congress, who believed the original Bowles-Simpson plan was based on policy rationales developed by technocrats who weren’t weighed down by the political baggage that hinders our elected officials.

The original Bowles-Simpson plan, approved by a majority of the commission members in 2010 but not by the super-majority that was needed under its rules to refer it to Congress, would have raised $2.6 trillion in revenue over a decade to reduce the deficit. It also would have cut spending by $2.9 trillion to reduce the deficit.

The new Bowles-Simpson plan would raise just $1.2 trillion to reduce the deficit, including revenue saved in the time that has passed between the two plans. (This includes roughly half a trillion dollars saved in the New Year’s deal from allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire plus additional revenue that Congress would need to raise.)

In a Washington Post interview, Erskine Bowles reminded the reporter that President Obama called for raising just $1.4 trillion in new revenue during debates over the fiscal cliff, and then explained, “being far out front of the president on revenues wasn’t something I wanted to do again.”

This all begs a question: If politicians feel they need leadership from an unelected panel (like the President’s Commission or the “super committee”) to address the budget in a technical way, but the technocrats leading those panels are simply finding the middle-ground between the positions of the politicians, then who exactly is leading? 

Background: The Misunderstood (Original) Bowles-Simpson Plan

The original Bowles-Simpson plan was often said to achieve one-third of its deficit-reduction from revenue increases, mostly from a tax reform that would raise $80 billion in 2015 alone and $180 billion in 2020 alone.

But, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, the original Bowles-Simpson plan raises much more revenue if you hold it to the same accounting standards used for most budget plans in Washington today — including savings from allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire and measuring revenue impacts over a full decade. By this standard, the original Bowles-Simpson plan raises about $2.6 trillion in new revenue and achieves almost half of its deficit-reduction goal through new revenue rather than spending cuts.

You might think that achieving half of a given deficit-reduction goal through spending cuts and another half through revenue increases is a centrist position. But with the President continuously compromising in his efforts woo Congressional Republicans to make a deal, and the latter refusing any increase in revenue at all, Bowles and Simpson now perceive the “middle-ground” to be somewhere entirely different.

None of this is to say that the original Bowles-Simpson plan was great policy. It would have (by some mechanism that was never entirely clear) capped revenue at 21 percent of GDP, even though government spending had reached 22 percent of GDP even back in the Reagan years.

The President, meanwhile, is calling for one-half of the remaining deficit reduction to come from increased revenues — and that’s not enough. When you add up all the deficit reduction that has occurred since Bowles and Simpson first failed in their attempt to bring Washington together, and the remaining deficit reduction Obama proposes, only about a third of it would take the form of increased revenue. The rest would come from spending cuts. That’s not balanced at all.

Front Page Photo of Barack Obama meeting with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles via Cal Almond Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

If confirmed, Jack Lew, the President’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, will oversee IRS enforcement of tax laws and will oversee the development and analysis of tax proposals, among other things. It would therefore be reassuring if Lew did not seem unaware of what is going on in tax havens, and unaware of the problems with proposals to exempt corporations’ offshore profits from U.S. taxes.

Much has been made of the fact that Lew, who worked at Citigroup before serving as chief of staff to the President, had an investment in a fund registered in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore tax haven.

Lew told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday that the fund was set up by Citigroup, that he didn’t know where it was based, and that he lost money on it in any event.

Lew “Unaware of Ugland House” in the Cayman Islands

What’s actually alarming about Lew’s comments before the committee is that he didn’t even seem to understand the crisis in our tax system that the Cayman Islands and other tax havens are taking advantage of.

For example, Republicans on the committee told of how the fund in question was registered in Ugland House, a small five-story building in the Cayman Islands where over 18,000 companies are officially headquartered. Obviously, most of these “companies” consist of little more than a post office box. Profits are shifted from real business activities in countries like the U.S. into these “companies” in Ugland House. The profits can then be designated as Cayman Island profits, because the Cayman Islands has no corporate income tax.

Those of us who follow tax issues know that Ugland House has been discussed for years at Congressional hearings — although Wednesday’s hearing may be the first time that it was brought up by Republicans.

The Washington Post describes the back-and-forth during the hearing on this topic:

Lew argued that “the tax code should be constructed to encourage investment in the United States.”

“Ugland House ought to be shut down?” Grassley asked.

“Senator, I am actually not familiar with Ugland House,” the witness pleaded. “I understand there are a lot of things that happen there.”

Lew Unaware that Offshore Tax Avoidance, Not Just Tax Evasion, Is a Problem

Equally troublesome is Lew’s defense. “I reported all income that I earned. I paid all taxes due.”

This completely misses the point and misses the point of the debate over tax reform. No one has suggested that Lew committed tax evasion — the criminal act of hiding income from the IRS. The Cayman Islands and other tax havens are certainly used for tax evasion, but that’s not the issue here.

The much larger problem is that our tax system allows massive tax avoidance — practices that reduce taxes that are mostly legal, but in many cases should not be legal — and that tax havens like the Cayman Islands are exploiting this weakness.

Lew probably did pay all the taxes that were due under the tax laws as they’re currently written. The same is true of General Electric, Boeing, Pepco, Verizon, Wells Fargo and the dozens of corporations that paid nothing over several years because the tax laws allowed it. The scandal is not that laws were broken, but that the laws actually allowed this.

Is Lew Unaware that the Administration Has Rejected a “Territorial” Tax System — Or Does He Know Something We Don’t?

One Senator at the hearing asked Lew about the possibility of the U.S. shifting to a “territorial” tax system — which is a euphemism for a tax system that exempts the offshore profits of corporations.

Lew said “there is room to work together.” He said [subscription required] “We actually have a debate between whether we go one way or the other [towards a territorial system or a worldwide system], and we have a hybrid system now. It’s a question of where we set the dial.”

This is alarming for those who thought that the administration had already wisely rejected moving to a territorial system. As CTJ has explained in a report and fact sheet, U.S. companies now can “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits, which creates an incentive to use accounting gimmicks to make their U.S. profits appear to be “foreign” profits generated in a tax haven like the Cayman Islands. Under a territorial system, they would never have to pay U.S. taxes on offshore profits, which would logically increase the incentive to engage in such tax dodges.

A year ago, the Obama administration stated that it opposes a “pure territorial system.” CTJ pointed out at the time that a little more clarity is needed because probably no country has a “pure” territorial system, and the “impure” ones are facilitating widely reported tax avoidance in Europe and across the world.

That clarification seemed to arrive when Vice President Joe Biden went out of his way to criticize the idea of a territorial tax system at the 2012 Democratic convention, referring to a study concluding that it could cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs.

We hope that this is simply another case of Lew being uninformed, and not an indication that the administration may shift towards favoring a territorial system.

Last year at this time, CTJ predicted, based on Facebook’s IPO paperwork, the company would get a federal tax refund in 2012 approaching $500 million, and the company’s SEC filing this month tells us we were right: Facebook is reporting a $429 million net tax refund from the federal and state treasuries. And it’s not because they weren’t profitable. Indeed, Mark Zuckerburg’s little company earned nearly $1.1 billion in profits.

CTJ’s new 2-pager on what Facebook’s February 2013 SEC filing means is here.

Facebook’s income tax refunds stem from the company’s use of a single tax break, that is the tax deductibility of executive stock options. That tax break reduced Facebook’s federal and state income taxes by $1,033 million in 2012, including refunds of earlier years’ taxes of $451 million.

Of course, Facebook is not the only corporation that benefits from stock option tax breaks.  Many big corporations give their executives (and sometimes other employees) options to buy the company’s stock at a favorable price in the future. When those options are exercised, corporations can take a tax deduction for the difference between what the employees pay for the stock and what it’s worth (while employees report this difference as taxable wages).  On page 12 of our 2011 Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers report, we discuss how 185 other large, profitable companies have exploited the stock option loophole.

We can probably expect the President’s first State of the Union address since being re-elected to include yet another plea to his Congressional adversaries to just be reasonable and meet him somewhere between his already compromised position and their Tea Party-enforced ideology.

We can probably expect the President to continue his calls for legislation that replaces all or part of the automatic spending cuts (sequestration) scheduled to begin March 1 with a mix of both revenue increases and spending cuts.  He calls this mix a “balanced approach” in spite of the fact that spending cuts have already been the main source of deficit reduction over the past two years, meaning that the only truly “balanced” way to replace sequestration at this point would be almost entirely by revenue increases.

We can also expect more talk of sacrifice from all Americans, and for the President to reiterate his openness to cutting programs that low- and middle-income Americans rely on – so long as the opposition agrees to some modest tax increases, on those who will hardly notice them.

A new working paper from Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) shows that all of this lopsided compromising is unnecessary and that Congress could raise enough new revenues to replace the entire scheduled sequestration and avoid the cuts everyone agrees will weaken our economy.  Sequestration, remember, was supposed to be a poison pill because of its unnecessarily blunt, across-the-board cuts of $85 billion from every program and agency this year, and $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

CTJ’s paper shows that such revenue increases can be achieved without affecting low- and middle-income Americans by instead asking profitable corporations, wealthy individuals – particularly those wealthy individuals sheltering their investment income – to pay their fair share in taxes.

For example, Congress could raise around $600 billion over a decade by ending “deferral” of U.S. taxes on offshore corporate profits.

In other words, Congress would repeal the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits until they bring those profits to the U.S.

Even if Congress didn’t need the revenue, there are still extremely important reasons to end deferral, as a new proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky would do. In some cases, for example, deferral encourages corporations to shift operations (and jobs) offshore; in other cases, it encourages corporations to use accounting gimmicks to disguise their U.S. profits as “foreign” profits generated in a tax haven like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.

Another revenue raising option is taxing capital gains at death.

Under the current rules, income that takes the form of capital gains on assets that are not sold during the owner’s lifetime escape taxation entirely. The rationale for this special treatment seems to be that it would be difficult to determine exactly how much an asset has appreciated if it’s been held for many years, but that’s a red herring because the current break applies to assets that have been held for even just a couple years.

It is not known exactly how much revenue would be raised by ending this break, but the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that this break will cost the Treasury over $250 billion in just the next five years.

Another option is the President’s own proposal to limit the tax savings that wealthy individuals get from each dollar of deductions and certain exclusions to 28 cents.

The tax code is filled with deductions and exclusions that effectively subsidize certain activities and behaviors, like buying a home, giving to charity, obtaining health care and many others. But providing subsidies through the tax code in this way means that the wealthiest people, those in the top, 39.6 percent tax bracket, are saving almost 40 cents for each dollar they spend on home mortgage interest, charitable giving and health care.  Middle-income people, on the other hand, might (if they’re lucky) be in the 25 percent bracket and save just 25 cents for each dollar spent on these things.

Limiting the tax savings to 28 percent would at least reduce that unfairness and it would raise over half a trillion dollars over a decade. Sadly, there is talk that the President, responding to misinformation about how it would impact charitable giving, is open to diluting his proposal so that the charitable deduction is not much affected.

The President can champion policies that large majorities of Americans support.

New polling shows the public is on board with the proposals outlined above. About two-thirds of Americans say corporations should pay more in taxes and two-thirds say the rich should pay more than they pay today. Significantly, this poll was taken more than two weeks after the New Year’s Day deal that allowed tax cuts to expire for the rich, aka “raised taxes” on the wealthiest Americans.

The only thing standing in the way of progressive tax reforms that raise enough revenue to replace the sequestration is the same thing that always stands in the way: the interests of powerful corporations and wealthy investors.  Those special interest groups aside, the vast majority of Americans would support the President in a more progressive approach to tax reform.

In recent months, Google, Inc. has come under fire by Britain’s parliament for its alleged use of “immoral” offshore tax dodges as well as by French authorities (Google’s history of shifting income to offshore jurisdictions, aka tax havens, is well documented). But none of this criticism seems to have changed the minds of Google’s executives: the company’s 2012 annual financial reports were released last week, and in them, the company admits to having shifted $9.5 billion in profits overseas in just the past year.

To put this in context, a recent CTJ report identified all 290 of the Fortune 500 corporations that have admitted holding cash indefinitely overseas; this report ranked Google as having the 15^th largest offshore cash hoard, with $24.8 billion of offshore cash in 2011. CTJ’s report also showed that the offshore cash holdings of big corporations are highly concentrated in the hands of just a few companies, and the biggest 20 among these 290 corporations represented a little over half of the $1.6 trillion in offshore income we documented.  And while we can’t precisely predict the revenue loss this represents, we did calculate that it could be as much as $433 billion in unpaid taxes.

So this fierce debate over whether to offer US multinationals a “tax holiday” for bringing their overseas stash back to the US, or to give them a permanent exemption by adopting a “territorial” tax system, is largely about whether a small number of large companies, including Google, should be rewarded for shipping their cash to low-tax jurisdictions. Given that most of us pay taxes on the money we earn in this country, only seems reasonable that colossally profitable corporations should do the same.

A bill introduced in Congress today called the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act would end “deferral,” the most problematic break in the U.S corporate income tax.

The bill would repeal the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. corporate income taxes on their offshore profits until those profits are “repatriated” (brought to the U.S.).

At an event announcing the proposal this morning, CTJ director Bob McIntyre spoke in favor of the legislation. McIntyre explained:

Because of “deferral,” companies like Apple, Microsoft, Dell and Eli Lilly can shift their U.S. profits, on paper, to foreign tax havens and avoid billions of dollars in taxes that they should be paying. At the end of 2010, just 10 companies, including those just mentioned, report that they had stashed $210 billion offshore, almost all of it in tax havens, and thereby avoided $69 billion in U.S. income taxes.

A recent CRS report found that in 2008, American multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their $940 billion in  overseas profits in five little tax-haven countries, even though only 4 percent of their foreign workforce and 7 percent of their foreign investments were in these countries.

In total, the JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimates that repealing deferral would add $600 billion to federal revenues over the next decade.

The bill was introduced today in the Senate by Bernie Sanders of Vermont and in the House by Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

CTJ’s recent working paper on tax reform options explains in detail how ending deferral would improve the corporate income tax. It also explains that President Obama has offered several proposals that would address some of the worst abuses of deferral, but would not be as effective or straightforward as simply repealing deferral.

CTJ has published previous reports and fact sheets explaining why Congress should repeal deferral and should also reject proposals to adopt a “territorial” tax system, which would make matters worse.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan has introduced bills to limit some of the worst abuses of deferral, and has been discussing similar proposals with other Senators as a way to raise revenue to replace or delay the automatic spending sequestration that is scheduled to go into effect in March.

The bills introduced by Senator Levin also include provisions targeting offshore tax evasion by individuals, in addition to the offshore tax avoidance by corporations. Offshore tax evasion involves hiding income from the IRS in offshore tax havens in ways that are criminal offenses, whereas the offshore tax avoidance by corporations generally involve practices that are not illegal — but that ought to be.

(Senator Levin’s legislation would also address other tax issues, like the “Facebook” loophole for stock options and the “carried interest” loophole.)

Ending deferral has become increasingly important as corporations hold more profits than ever offshore. A recent CTJ report finds that public information from 290 of the Fortunate 500 companies indicate that they hold $1.6 trillion in profits offshore. For many of these corporations, the majority of their “offshore” profits are actually U.S. profits that have been artificially shifted to offshore tax havens and then reported as “foreign” profits.  

Citizens for Tax Justice has a new online calculator that will tell you what you’d pay in federal taxes in 2013 under three different hypothetical scenarios:

1) Congress did nothing during the New Year and allowed the “fiscal cliff” to take effect.

2) Congress extended all tax cuts in effect in 2012 and delayed all tax increases that were scheduled to go into effect.

3) Congress enacted the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which extended most, but not all tax cuts. This is what actually happened.

Use CTJ’s online tax calculator.

The calculator illustrates the impact of the changes in personal income taxes (the expiration of some of the Bush tax cuts for the very rich and the extension of some 2009 provisions expanding the EITC and Child Tax Credit) as well as the health reform-related change to the Medicare tax and the expiration of the Social Security tax holiday.

The calculator demonstrates to the vast majority Americans that their personal income taxes are no different than they would be if all the Bush tax cuts were extended. (A CTJ fact sheet explains that less than one percent of Americans lost any part of the Bush tax cuts under the fiscal cliff deal that was enacted.)

But the calculator also demonstrates that the expiration of the payroll tax holiday — which lawmakers of both parties barely bothered to debate at all — affects middle-income people.

For more information, see CTJ’s fact sheet detailing the provisions in the fiscal cliff deal, as well as CTJ’s reports on the distributional effects and revenue impacts of the deal.

Photo of Calculators via Dave Dugdale (of Learning DSLR Video) and 401 K 2013 Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A new short report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp has put forward an intriguing proposal to reform the tax treatment of derivatives — the complex financial instruments that played a starring role in the financial collapse. As the report explains, Camp unfortunately proposes to use any revenue saved from his reforms to pay for reductions in tax rates.

Derivatives can create huge opportunities for tax avoidance. To take just one example explained in the report, Ronald S. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, used a derivative called a “variable prepaid forward contract” to sell stock without paying taxes on the capital gains for a long time. Lauder entered into a contract to lend $72 million worth of stock to an investment bank and promised to sell the stock to the bank at a future date at a discounted price, in return for an immediate payment of cash. The contract also hedged against any loss in the value of the stock.

The contract put Lauder in a position that is economically the same as having sold the stock — he received cash for the stock and did not bear the risk of the stock losing value — and yet he does not have to pay tax on the capital gains until several years later, when the sale of the stock technically occurs under the contact.

The most significant of Chairman Camp’s proposals would subject most derivatives to what is called “mark-to-market” taxation. At the end of each year, gains and losses from derivatives would be included in income, even if the derivatives were not sold.

Assuming the mark-to-market system is implemented properly without loopholes or special exemptions for those with lobbying clout, the result would be that the types of tax dodges described above would no longer provide any benefit. The taxpayers would not bother to enter into those contracts because they would be taxed at the end of the year on the value of the contracts (meaning they are unable to defer taxes on capital gains) and the gains would be taxed at ordinary income tax rates.

The reform could be key to blocking the sort of tax dodges available only to the very rich.

Over the weekend, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid both stated that closing tax loopholes is part of the solution to replacing the coming sequestration of federal spending.

CTJ’s recently updated working paper on tax reform options identifies three categories of reforms that would accomplish this. They include ending tax breaks and loopholes that allow wealthy individuals to shelter their investment income from taxation, ending breaks and loopholes that allow large, profitable corporations to shift their profits offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, and limiting the ability of wealthy individuals to use itemized deductions and exclusions to lower their taxes.

Sequestration: Spending Cuts No One Seems to Want

In 2011, President Obama and Congress agreed to across-the-board sequestration (automatic spending cuts) that they hoped to replace with more targeted, thought-out deficit-reduction measures.

Under the law they enacted, the Budget Control Act of 2011 (the BCA), the sequester was supposed to take effect in the beginning of this year. But the recent deal addressing the “fiscal cliff” replaced the first two months of sequester savings with some arcane accounting gimmicks, so now the sequester begins March 1 if Congress does not act. Between then and the end of the year, it would cut spending by $85 billion. Over a decade, the sequester will cut spending by $1.2 trillion.   

Those cuts are spread evenly across defense and non-defense spending, affecting the programs favored by politicians of every ideological stripe. Lawmakers agree that they do not like the scheduled sequester. Congressional Republican leaders argue that it should be replaced entirely with spending cuts while Democratic leaders in Congress and President Obama insist that revenue increases must be involved.

Revenue Is the Answer

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that if the sequester is averted with spending cuts and no revenue increases, that will mean that the combination of all the deficit-reduction measures, which began in 2011, would include five times as much in spending cuts as revenue increases. The President is calling for any deficit reduction from this point on to include an equal share of spending cuts and revenue increases. But even this would mean that the combination of all these deficit-reduction measures would include twice as much in spending cuts as revenue increases.

A fair approach would be for Congress to replace the sequester entirely with new revenue. There are several reform options described in CTJ’s working paper that would raise hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade.

Some of these reform options could be enacted on their own, like President Obama’s proposal to limit the tax savings of each dollar of deductions and exclusions to 28 cents. Others are more likely to be part of a larger tax reform, like ending the rule allowing corporations to “defer” (not pay) U.S. taxes on their offshore profits or ending the provision in the personal income tax exempting capital gains at death. All of these reforms would end or cut back tax breaks that are hugely beneficial to extremely wealthy families and large corporations but not to low- and middle-income families.

A new working paper on tax reform options from Citizens for Tax Justice has a section describing a category of revenue-raising proposals that has not received much attention: ending tax shelters for investment income. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers noted in a recent op-ed: “What’s needed is an element that has largely been absent to date: [reducing] the numerous exclusions from the definition of adjusted gross income that enable the accumulation of great wealth with the payment of little or no taxes.”

The problem addressed by these proposals is partly related to the problem posed by the special, low rates that apply to capital gains and stock dividends. (Congress certainly needs to eliminate those special rates, so that investment income is taxed just like any other income.)

The breaks and loopholes criticized by Larry Summers and explained in CTJ’s new working paper allow wealthy individuals to delay or completely avoid paying taxes on their capital gains — at any rate. It does not matter what tax rate applies to capital gains so long as the wealthy can use these shelters to avoid paying any tax at all.

Path to Reform that Taxes All Income at the Same Rates

If these tax shelters are eliminated, that may make it easier for Congress to tackle the other problem with investment income — the special low rates that apply to investment income that takes the form of capital gains and stock dividends. Currently, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the official revenue estimator for Congress, assumes that people will respond to hikes in tax rates on capital gains by holding onto their assets or finding ways to avoid the tax, reducing the amount of revenue that can be raised from such a rate hike. (CTJ has explained why JCT’s assumptions are overblown in the appendix of our 2012 report on revenue-raising options.)

But if the various shelters that people use to avoid taxes on capital gains are closed off, JCT could logically assume that raising tax rates on capital gains will raise substantially more revenue.

Tax Capital Gains at Death

The tax shelter that is probably the largest, in terms of revenue, is the “stepped-up basis” for capital gains at death. Income that takes the form of capital gains on assets that are not sold during the owner’s lifetime escape taxation entirely. The heirs of the assets enjoy a “stepped-up basis” in the assets, meaning that any accrued gains at the time the decedent died are never taxed. (The estate tax once ensured that such gains would be subject to some taxation, but repeal of three-fourths of the estate tax has been made permanent in the fiscal cliff deal.)

The justification for the stepped-up basis seems to be the difficulty in ascertaining the basis (the purchase price, generally) of an asset that a taxpayer held for many years before leaving it to his or her heirs at death.

But this difficulty (which is decreasing rapidly because of digital records) does not justify the sweeping rule allowing stepped up basis for all assets left to heirs — even assets that have a clearly recorded value and assets that were only acquired right before death.

It is also not obvious that this difficultly with determining the basis is that different after the death of the owner of the asset. Consider an asset that was held for, say, 40 years and bequeathed at death and an asset that was held for 40 years and then sold to fund the taxpayer’s retirement. In the former situation, the gains that accrued over those 40 years are never taxed, but in the latter situation they are taxed. But any difficulties in determining basis would seem to be the same in these situations.

The proposal to tax capital gains at death, and the others described in the working paper, challenge some breaks that wealthy individuals and their accountants and lawyers are deeply attached to. But the vast majority of Americans whose income takes the form of wages are not able to use these maneuvers to delay or avoid taxes on their income. They would have trouble understanding why these tax shelters for the wealthy should be preserved while Congress considers dramatic cuts to public investments that support all Americans.

On Friday, the IRS held its EITC Awareness Day, working with local governments, non-profits and community groups to ensure that people potentially eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) file tax returns and claim it. The IRS says that one in five who are eligible for the EITC do not claim it.

The EITC, which is basically a tax credit equal to a certain percentage of earnings (up to a limit) to encourage work and reduce poverty, is widely misunderstood by many pundits and members of Congress. Like the Child Tax Credit, the EITC is a refundable tax credit, meaning it provides a benefit even when the credit is larger than the federal personal income tax that a taxpayer would otherwise owe. This can result in a negative income tax, meaning the IRS will send a check to the taxpayer.

These refundable credits are one reason why some Americans do not owe federal personal income taxes. (There are other reasons as well, like the fact that most of the Social Security benefits that retirees and people with disabilities receive are not subject to the income tax.)

Conservative Opposition to 2009 Expansions of EITC and Child Tax Credit

For the past couple years, conservative politicians and pundits have largely missed or ignored the fact that taxpayers with a negative income tax rate resulting from refundable credits do pay other types of taxes, which tend to be regressive. Federal payroll taxes, to take one example, are paid by everyone who works (and the EITC and the refundable part of the Child Tax Credit are only available to those with earnings). And all Americans pay state and local taxes, which are particularly regressive. The refundable credits in the federal personal income tax offsets some of the regressive impact of these other taxes.

Conservative politicians actually came out against expanding the EITC and the refundable part of the child tax credit in 2009, when President Obama proposed expanding the EITC for larger families and families headed by married couples and expanding the refundable part of the Child Tax Credit for very-low income working families. Those provisions were included in the economic recovery act enacted in 2009 and again in the deal the President made with Republicans at the end of 2010 to extend all the expiring tax cuts for another two years.

But each time Congressional Republicans introduced a proposal to extend tax cuts, it allowed these particular provisions to expire. CTJ’s figures showed what was at stake if these 2009 provisions expired. For example, CTJ’s state-by-state figures showed that in 2013, benefits for 13 million families with 26 million children would be lost if the provisions were not extended.

All Americans Pay Taxes

Conservative pundits claimed that these provisions led to nearly half of Americans not paying taxes. Paul Krugman at the New York Times, Ruth Marcus and Ezra Klein at the Washington Post and other observers have noted CTJ’s data showing that once you account for all of the different types of taxes, Americans in all income groups do, in fact, pay taxes and that our tax system overall is just barely progressive.

Mitt Romney and the 47 Percent

Perhaps the misinformation came to its spectacular climax when presidential candidate Mitt Romney was recorded making disparaging remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who, in his words, “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it... These are people who pay no income tax.”

2009 Expansions of EITC and Child Tax Credit Extended for Only Five Years

One might think that the backlash produced by Romney’s comments, and his subsequent electoral loss, might have prompted conservatives to change their thinking. But they can only evolve so much, so fast. As an apparent concession to the right, the fiscal cliff deal approved by the House and Senate on New Year’s Day extended President Obama’s 2009 expansions of the EITC and Child Tax Credit for just five years — even though it made other tax cuts permanent.

Making permanent the EITC and Child Credit expansion would have cost in the neighborhood of $100 billion over a decade, and the five-year extension of these provisions cost around half that amount. This is real money, but insignificant compared to the $369 billion spent on making permanent estate tax cuts for millionaires or the $3.3 trillion spent on making permanent most of the income tax cuts first enacted under George W. Bush.

The EITC and the Child Tax Credit do a lot to offset the regressive impacts of the many types of taxes paid by low-income Americans. Congress should remember this and make the recent expansions of these refundable credits permanent.

A two-page report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains new evidence of offshore tax avoidance by corporations unearthed by the non-partisan Congress Research Service (CRS).

In a nutshell, CRS finds that U.S. corporations report a huge share of their profits as officially earned in small, low-tax countries where they have very little investment and workforce while reporting a much smaller percentage of their profits in larger, industrial countries where they actually have massive investments and workforces.

This essentially confirms that corporations are artificially inflating the share of their profits that they claim to earn tax havens where they don’t really do much real business. Remember that offshore tax avoidance by corporations often takes the form of convoluted transactions that allow U.S. corporations to claim that most of the profits from their business are earned in offshore subsidiaries in a tax haven like Bermuda, and that the offshore subsidiary my be nothing more than a post office box.

And Bermuda is a great example. CRS finds that the amount of profits that U.S. corporations report to earn in Bermuda is 1,000 percent of Bermuda’s GDP! That’s ten times Bermuda’s gross national product — ten times the tiny country’s actual economic output. This is obviously impossible and confirms that much of the profits that U.S. corporations claim are earned there represent no actual economic activity but rather represent profits shifted from the U.S. or from other countries to take advantage of that fact that Bermuda has no corporate income tax.

Sadly, most of the tax dodges practiced by U.S. corporations to shift their profits to tax havens are actually legal. CTJ’s report explains what type of tax reform is needed to address this.

While the fiscal cliff debate may have seemed abstract and technical to many Americans, the results of the tax deal has become much more tangible to 77.5% of Americans who are seeing their take-home pay decrease in their first paychecks of the year, due to the expiration of the payroll tax holiday.

Anti-tax, anti-government types in the media and politics have taken advantage of the confusion over the fiscal cliff deal to make it seem like it was one big tax hike. One even argued that President Obama tricked the American public when he said he would only increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans. This is utter nonsense because what the deal really did was simply let a slew of temporary tax cuts expire. 

As to the payroll tax holiday, President Obama actually supported another one year extension, but was forced to abandon it by House Republicans who largely opposed extending the holiday as part of the fiscal cliff deal. Going back even further, the temporary payroll tax holiday was only even put into effect in 2010 because President Obama demanded it, (albeit as a second choice to the much more effective Making Work Pay Credit which Republicans opposed), as part of his economic stimulus package.

Moreover, while many Americans may feel the pain from lower take-home pay this year compared to last, the reality is that the fiscal cliff deal made 85 percent of the Bush income tax cuts permanent. These rate reductions and other provisions were all written to be temporary and expire in 2010, but now they are permanent parts of the tax code and amount to $3.9 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years. In other words, rather than shifting America back to the Clinton-era tax rates, President Obama instead opted to make permanent the historically low Bush-era tax rates for 99.1 percent of Americans.

Finally, it’s worth remembering why we pay the payroll tax to begin with. It is the funding source for Social Security, one of the most successful government programs in US history. Although paying lower payroll taxes was nice for a couple years, the reality is that the holiday could not have been extended forever without endangering the long-term viability of Social Security’s funding.

The expiration of parts of the Bush-era income tax cuts under the fiscal cliff deal affects just under one percent of taxpayers this year, while the expiration of the payroll tax cut affects over three-fourths of taxpayers this year, according to a new CTJ report that includes state-by-state figures.

The fiscal cliff deal (the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012), which was approved by the House and Senate on New Year’s Day and signed into law by President Obama, extended most of the Bush-era income tax cuts but allowed all of the payroll tax cut in effect over the previous two years to expire.

The figures in the report show the percentage of taxpayers in each income group nationally and in each state who will pay higher income taxes or payroll taxes as a result in 2013.

Read the report

Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued on Sunday that, with the passage of the fiscal cliff deal, the “tax issue is finished” and that instead of raising more revenue we need to confront our “spending addiction” in order to reduce the deficit. What McConnell failed to mention was that lawmakers in Washington have already passed trillions of dollars in deficit-reducing spending cuts, while at the same time enacting trillions of dollars in deficit-increasing tax cuts.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in McConnell’s logic is the idea that lawmakers have already raised a substantial amount of revenue. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the official revenue estimators for Congress, the fiscal cliff deal will actually reduce revenue by $3.9 trillion over the next decade. The deal raises revenue only if compared to what would happen if Congress had extended all the tax cuts (which were set to expire by law at the end of 2012).

If you accept this baseline as touted by the President and others who supported the deal, the fiscal cliff resolution can be said to be a $620 billion tax “increase” on the rich. But even if you accept that logic, it is nonetheless true that the substantial spending cuts already enacted in order to reduce the deficit justify raising a lot more revenue.

According to the Center for American Progress, since fiscal 2011 nearly $3 in spending cuts were enacted for every $1 in revenue raised. In other words, even under the artificial baseline that allows us to pretend Congress just raised revenue, we would need to raise roughly $1.2 trillion in additional revenue before even reaching parity with the level of spending cuts already implemented.

Anti-tax lawmakers like Senator McConnell claim that spending is so out of control that we can’t possibly raise enough revenue from taxes to reverse the growth of the debt. But, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the long-term debt crisis is largely driven by the persistence of the Bush tax cuts, rather than spending. In fact, the CBO’s long term budget outlook found that had Congress done nothing and simply allowed all the Bush era tax cuts to expire, the debt would have been on track to begin dropping substantially starting in 2015 and over the coming decades.

There is also the related matter of fairness in our tax code. The reality is that the fiscal cliff deal did very little to change the tax rate paid by wealthy investors like Warren Buffett or Mitt Romney and actually included an extension of many of the corporate tax breaks that allow companies like General Electric to avoid taxes altogether. As we’ve explained, these corporate tax breaks are likely to be extended again and again and end up costing more than was saved by ending some of the tax cuts for the rich.

Considering it’s centrality to fixing the debt and improving fairness, the “tax issue” is certainly not finished. It’s really just getting started.

In the first two days of the new Congress, 21 bills to amend the tax code were introduced in the House of Representatives. The 113th Congress officially convened at noon on January 3rd and by the end of the business day on January 4th, House members had introduced 218 bills and over 40 resolutions. (By way of comparison, the 112th Congress passed only 219 bills during its entire two-year session, making it the least productive Congress on record!)

Bills to reduce taxes and revenues outnumber other kinds of tax proposals. For example, there are two designed to abolish the estate tax forever. There are proposals to repeal the 16th amendment, (that allows Congress to collect taxes in the first place), and to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service. Subtler proposals are special interest giveaways.  For example, there’s one that would extend tax-free health savings accounts to church-based health insurance co-ops, another that would roll back transfer taxes on farmland and a couple designed to expand or entrench the obscenely expensive (PDF) research tax credit for business. And one more asks Congress to commit to protecting the tax break that experts across the ideological spectrum would like to see end: the mortgage interest deduction on second homes.

It’s worth mentioning that the anti-tax beast is not just a Beltway menace; similarly radical ideas are on the agenda in the states, too. As recently as November 2012, voters in 11 states faced 17 tax-related ballot initiatives, and most of them would have exacerbated income inequality and drained revenues.  (Some prevailed, some did not.) Looking ahead, some 30 states are looking at tax changes of some kind this year and 15 are likely to undertake a substantial overhaul of their tax codes. Only a few, however, will be doing it in a way that makes their tax systems more fair and sustainable, and too many proposals mimic the disastrous laws already passed in states like Kansas and Michigan.

The federal fiscal cliff deal that left 85 percent of the Bush era tax cuts in place indefinitely was a bad deal for most Americans; it raises too little revenue and leaves all of the same breaks and loopholes available to the very rich and the large corporations.  The lobbyists who brought you that stinker were back at work on January 2^nd pushing for more, and their friends in the 113^th Congress seem all too happy to help.  

The legislation signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday makes permanent 85 percent of the Bush-era income tax cuts and 95 percent of the Bush-era estate tax cut still in effect in 2012. It also directs 18 percent of its income and estate tax cuts to the richest one percent of Americans — and directs an identical 18 percent of the tax cuts to the poorest 60 percent of Americans.

These are some of the findings of two reports from Citizens for Tax Justice. One examines the revenue impacts of the fiscal cliff deal and explains why the White House claims the bill saves $620 billion over ten years even while it is official estimated to reduce revenue by $3.9 trillion over ten years. The report also explains that the law includes a package of provisions known as the “extenders” because they extend several special-interest tax breaks for two years, and that these provisions are likely to be extended again in the future and eventually offset the revenue saved from allowing high-income tax cuts to expire.

The second CTJ report examines the distributional effects of the law. It finds that while the law will give the middle fifth of Americans an average tax cut of $880 this year, which is equal to 2.0 percent of their income. At the same time, the law will give the richest one percent of Americans an average tax cut of $34,190, equal to 2.3 percent of their income.

Read the two reports:

Revenue Impacts of the Fiscal Cliff Deal

Poorest Three-Fifths of Americans Get Just 18% of the Tax Cuts in the Fiscal Cliff Deal

Also see CTJ’s New Year’s Day report:

The Biden-McConnell Tax Deal Would Save Less than Half as Much Revenue as President Obama's Original Tax Proposal

Former President George W. Bush mused recently that if the tax cuts he signed in 2001 and 2003 weren’t named after him, maybe more people would like them. But what’s to like about a package of tax policies that contributed trillions to our national debt and to the consolidation of wealth among an unsustainably small minority of American families?

Well, there’s not much more to like about the eleventh hour legislation just passed by Congress that enshrines the vast majority of those policies permanently in the federal tax code.

The American Taxpayer Relief Act, passed by the U.S. Senate and then the House hours before we all went back to business on January 2, 2013, has generated thousands of contradictory headlines. It’s a tax hike on the rich! A tax hike on the poor! The middle class is saved! The middle class is screwed!

One thing is sure: the U.S. Treasury is screwed. Had these 2001 and 2003 tax cuts – scheduled to expire after ten years because of their onerous cost, but extended for another two in 2010 – actually been wiped from the books, we would have been on the fast track to deficit reduction even without any spending cuts. But having preserved the vast majority of those low rates and loopholes, we’ll be hemorrhaging almost four trillion dollars over the next ten years.

When we first learned of the Senate deal taking shape on New Year’s Eve, we wrote:  

Today, several news reports indicate that the deal taking shape in Washington would raise less revenue than the President's December 17 proposal. There are reports that the threshold for higher income tax rates would be $400,000 for singles and $450,000 for married couples, and that this $450,000/$400,000 threshold would also apply to higher income tax rates on capital gains and dividends…. Congress should reject any deal that extends more of the Bush income tax cuts or Bush estate tax cuts than President Obama originally proposed to extend. America would be better off if Congress simply does nothing and allows the Bush income and estate tax cuts to expire completely.

When the Senate passed legislation based on that deal, we ran the numbers and published our results on New Year’s Day, 2013, we concluded:

The tax deal negotiated between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and approved by the Senate early on January 1 would save less than half as much revenue as President’s Obama’s original proposal…. The Biden-McConnell deal includes estate tax provisions that are much closer to the even more generous rules of 2011 and 2012 than the 2009 rules.

After a false start and dramatic reconvening, the U.S. House passed that Senate-approved legislation moments before midnight on New Year’s Day, and the President signed it on January 3^rd.

Our full analysis of the legislation is contained in two new reports:

Poorest Three-Fifths of Americans Get Just 18% of the Tax Cuts in the Fiscal Cliff Deal

Revenue Impacts of the Fiscal Cliff Deal

The so-called Bush tax cuts that dominated fiscal debates for far too long are now history, and we may never speak of them again. But their legacy endures in our crippling deficit, and our growing economic inequality. And now, thanks to President Obama and the 112^th Congress, they will continue to distort our tax system into the foreseeable future.

Since he first began running for President, Barack Obama has consistently proposed to extend almost four-fifths of the tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush, proposing to allow the expiration of just the one fifth of the tax cuts that go solely to the richest two percent of Americans. This was President Obama's proposal to extend the tax cuts for income up to $250,000 for married couples and up to $200,000 for singles (PDF). To extend any more of these tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans is entirely unwarranted and fiscally irresponsible.

Our latest report estimates the revenue impact of the President's proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts for income up to $250,000/$200,000 and to reclaim a fraction of the lost revenue by limiting the savings from deductions and exclusions for high-income Americans. Compared to what would happen if Congress extends the Bush income tax cuts and makes no other changes, this would save $1.4 trillion. Compared to what would happen if Congress does nothing and lets the Bush tax cuts expire, this would lose $2.4 trillion.

That report also illustrates the impact of President Obama's recent proposal which became public on December 17, and which is the same except that the income threshold for higher tax rates on ordinary income would be raised from $250,000/$200,000 to $400,000. If the limit on deductions and exclusions is still included, this would save 85 percent as much revenue as the President’s original, $1.4 trillion proposal. If the limit on deductions and exclusions is not included, the report finds this would save just 49 percent as much as Obama’s original, $1.4 trillion proposal.

Today, several news reports indicate that the deal taking shape in Washington would raise less revenue than the President's December 17 proposal. There are reports that the threshold for higher income tax rates would be $400,000 for singles and $450,000 for married couples, and that this $450,000/$400,000 threshold would also apply to higher income tax rates on capital gains and dividends. (The President’s December 17 proposal would still have allowed higher rates to go into effect for capital gains and dividends for income in excess of $250,000/$200,000.)

Further, it is unclear whether or not any limit on deductions and exclusions is included in the deal taking shape now. This means that the proposal could save considerably less than half as much revenue as the President’s original, $1.4 trillion proposal.

In addition to this, lawmakers want to address the Bush-era estate tax cuts, which also expire tonight. The President has long proposed to make permanent the estate tax cuts that were in effect for one year, in 2009. CTJ has criticized this proposal because it asks only a tiny fraction of the wealthy to pay any estate tax. (CTJ’s figures show that only 0.3 percent of deaths in 2009 resulted in federal estate tax liability.)  There are reports that the deal taking shape would extend an even larger estate tax cut, one much closer to the estate tax cut that was in effect for 2011 and 2012.

CTJ’s most recent reports on other components of the New Year’s Eve tax deal taking shape are online at:

Capital Gains and Dividends
Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
EITC and Child Tax Credit
State-by-State figures on Bush tax cuts

Congress should reject any deal that extends more of the Bush income tax cuts or Bush estate tax cuts than President Obama originally proposed to extend. America would be better off if Congress simply does nothing and allows the Bush income and estate tax cuts to expire completely. This would merely allow the tax rules to revert to those in place at the end of the Clinton administration. Given the economic prosperity experienced at the of the Clinton years, it’s difficult to believe that this more fiscally responsible approach will have a significant adverse effect on our economy. Of course, Congress should act to stimulate the economy so that the private sector creates more jobs, but almost any measure would be more effective in accomplishing this goal than extending more of the disastrous Bush tax cuts for the rich.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the “Plan B” tax proposal that House Speaker John Boehner plans to put to a vote in the House of Representatives would allow the richest one percent of Americans to pay $36,000 less in federal income taxes, on average, than they would pay under President Obama’s most recent proposal. 

Under Plan B, the poorest three-fifths of Americans would pay more in federal income taxes, on average, than they would pay under the President’s latest plan.

Read the report

The latest tax proposals from Speaker Boehner and President Obama show that their respective positions on taxes have moved very slightly towards each other.

President Obama’s major proposals for the personal income tax would have, in their original version, saved $1.4 trillion compared to what would happen if Congress extended the Bush tax cuts and made no other changes to the tax code. As illustrated in the table on the following page, the President’s latest proposal, which became public December 17, would save 85 percent of that amount. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner’s Plan B would save 24 percent of that amount.

Compared to current law (compared to what would happen if Congress does nothing), both of these proposals would lose trillions of dollars over the next decade.

United for a Fair Economy (UFE) invites everyone who supports fair taxes to join a petition to Congress to enact a robust estate tax.

The petition drive was launched on Tuesday as UFE’s Responsible Wealth project convened a group of well-known policy and political luminaries supporting a stronger estate tax and billionaires who believe that their estates should be taxed upon their deaths. The group includes George Soros, Abigail Disney, Robert Rubin, President Jimmy Carter and others.

Richard Rockefeller (one of the Rockefellers) spoke about how public investments funded by taxes will improve the quality of life for his heirs in a way that his own money alone cannot.

"If the world I leave behind is one of gated communities, growing inequality and misery among the have-nots, downward mobility for the middle class, a degraded environment and a rotting social and physical infrastructure -- then [my children's] inheritance will be a shabby one -- no matter how much money they get.”

The bill approved by Senate Democrats over the summer to extend most, but not all, of the Bush income tax cuts did not address the Bush estate tax cuts, which also expire at the end of this year. This is apparently because Senate Democrats themselves could not agree on how robust the estate tax should be.

The Bush tax cuts included the gradual reduction and eventual repeal (in 2010) of the estate tax. The “compromise” that President Obama signed that extended the Bush income tax cuts through 2012 does not repeal the estate tax altogether, but does set it at very low levels. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress want to extend these current rules, which exempt $5 million of an estate’s value per person, meaning a married couple can leave at least $10 million behind without triggering any estate tax. The taxable part of an estate is then taxed at a rate of 35 percent.

President Obama and many Democrats want to bring back the estate tax rules that were in place, for one year, in 2009, which exempted $3.5 million of an estate’s value per person (meaning $7 million for a married couple) and taxed the taxable part of an estate at 45 percent.

Citizens for Tax Justice has pointed out that even President Obama’s proposal (to reinstate the 2009 estate tax rules) would only tax an absurdly small number of estates. A 2011 report from CTJ shows that just 0.3 percent of deaths in 2009 resulted in estate tax liability. (The report also has figures for each state.)

The UFE petition recognizes this and calls for an estate tax that is more robust than what President Obama proposes, one that exempts $2 million of an estate’s value per person. The taxable part of an estate would be taxed at progressive rates, starting at 45 percent.

New CTJ Report: Fortune 500 Corporations Holding $1.6 Trillion in Profits Offshore

More Evidence that the Corporate Lobbyists’ Version of Tax “Reform” Should NOT Be a Part of Any Budget Deal 

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains that among the Fortune 500 corporations, 290 have revealed that they, collectively, held nearly $1.6 trillion in profits outside the United States at the end of 2011. This is one indication of how much they might benefit from a so-called “territorial” tax system, which would permanently exempt these offshore profits from U.S. taxes.

Just 20 of the corporations — including household names like GE, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs — held $794 billion offshore, half of the total. The data are compiled from figures buried deep in the footnotes of the “10-K” financial reports filed by the companies annually with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Read the report.

The appendix of the report includes the full list of 290 corporations and the size of their offshore profits in each of the last three years, as well as the state in which their headquarters is located.

Corporate lobbyists and their allies in Congress are pushing for two changes that would benefit their investors but leave America worse off. Neither one of these should be included in any deal coming out of the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

Congress Should Reject a Revenue-Neutral Corporate Tax Overhaul

The first goal of the corporate lobbyists is an overhaul of the corporate tax that does not raise any revenue. Some corporations have stated that they would support closing corporate tax loopholes, but only if all the revenue savings is used to reduce the corporate tax rate. This would be a terrible waste of revenue at a time when lawmakers are considering cutting public investments that middle-income people rely on in order to reduce the deficit.

In May of 2011, a letter circulated by Citizens for Tax Justice was signed by 250 organizations, including organizations from every state, calling on Congress to close corporate tax loopholes and use the revenue saved for public investments and deficit reduction rather than lowering the corporate tax rate.

CTJ also has published a fact sheet and a detailed report explaining why corporate tax reform should be revenue-positive rather than revenue-neutral.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration endorsed a revenue-neutral corporate tax overhaul in the vague “framework” it released in February of this year. As lawmakers face real choices about whether to cut programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and education, we believe many will realize that demanding corporations contribute more to the society that makes their profits possible is more sensible.

Congress Should Reject a Territorial Tax System

The second goal of the corporate lobbyists is a transition to a “territorial” tax system, which would call off U.S. taxes on the offshore profits of U.S. corporations. As the new CTJ report explains, many of those profits are truly U.S. profits that have been made to look like “foreign” profits generated in tax havens through convoluted accounting schemes.

Citizens for Tax Justice has published a fact sheet and a detailed report explaining why Congress should reject a territorial tax system.

Thankfully, the administration has not endorsed a territorial tax system and Vice President Biden even criticized it during his speech at the Democratic National Convention. We hope that the President and his allies in Congress hold firm to this position. 

A story in this week’s New York Times uses CTJ numbers to demonstrate what CTJ has said many times: President Obama’s proposal is not the confiscatory tax plan opponents would have you believe.

We have pointed out that taxpayers earning just over $250,000 really don’t have to worry because the President’s plan would barely affect them.  “A married couple whose income is exactly $250,000 would see no change in their income taxes under Obama’s plan,” we explained.

As the New York Times puts it,  “A close look at the president’s plan shows that a large majority of families making up to $300,000 — as well as hundreds of thousands of families with even larger incomes — would not pay taxes at a higher marginal rate…. [T]hey are the beneficiaries of choices the administration has made to ensure that families earning less than $250,000 do not pay higher rates.”

According to the Times, in crafting the plan, Obama’s team assumed high-income families take $20,000 in deductions, even though most families in this income range take a much larger amount, further driving down their taxable income. The Obama team also indexes the $250,000 and $200,000 thresholds for inflation from 2009, when the proposal was first formally put forward. This means families in 2013 could have considerably more than $250,000 in income without losing any part of the Bush income tax cuts under Obama’s approach.

“They wanted to be able to say that ‘Absolutely nobody making less than $250,000 could possibly pay higher taxes under our plan,’” said Robert S. McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “So they had to assume the most ridiculous assumptions, that even if you’re a childless couple with no itemized deductions making $250,001, your taxes still won’t go up. They figured that if this couple existed and their taxes went up, somebody would find them and jump on ’em.”

You can view the graphics here.

In the end, the Times reports that if the President’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on the top two percent is implemented, only about 32 percent of families with income from $250,000 to $300,000 would lose part of their income tax cuts. About 77 percent of families with income of $300,000 to $350,000 would lose tax cuts, and almost 99 percent of families with incomes above one million would lose some of theirs.

A related story in the Boston Globe uses other new CTJ numbers to show that, by contrast, one of the Republican plans to cap deductions without raising rates would have the inverse effect; it would “exact a bigger toll on upper- to high-income earners in the professional classes,” as opposed to the Mitt Romneys and Warren Buffetts.

While the headlines on the fiscal cliff negotiations are about wrangling over the top individual tax rates, multinational corporations are quietly lobbying for an agreement to move the U.S. international tax rules to a territorial system.

Members of the so-called Fix the Debt Campaign have called for massive cuts to social programs while seeking additional tax breaks for their own companies. A move to a territorial system could give the 63 publicly-held companies in the Fix the Debt campaign an immediate windfall of up to $134 billion and would massively increase their incentives to move even more profits offshore, where they would then be permanently exempted from U.S. taxes. Terrible-torial.

Meanwhile, defense contractors that exhort Congress to find a “reasonable approach” are also lobbying for permanent tax breaks on their offshore earnings. And major corporations complain (perennially) about having to pay U.S. taxes on any foreign cash they decide to bring home.

Moving to a territorial tax system would be a disaster for the U.S. Treasury and an open invitation for multinational companies to intensify their offshore shenanigans. Our fact sheet explains why. For an illustration of why it’s such a bad idea, you only need to look at headlines from the U.K.  Because of their territorial tax system, they are unable to collect corporate income tax from U.S. corporate giants Starbucks, Amazon, and Google who are profiting wildly from sales and business in the U.K.  Recently, these multinational giants were hauled before Parliament to explain their “immoral” tax-dodging behavior.

The U.S. already collects only a fraction of the taxes corporations owe on their profits; why would we move to a system that makes the problem even worse?

While most of the IRS’s various statistical reports tend to inspire little excitement in the public and media, the agency’s latest report,“Individual Income Tax Returns, 2010” is something of a barnburner, in part because it confirms several troubling trends in the federal income tax.  A few stand outs:

1. Our Income Tax Code Stops Being Progressive at $2 Million of Income

According to the new IRS data, the average effective income tax rate actually drops from 25.3 percent for people making (a mere) $1.5 - 2 million to 20.7 percent for taxpayers making $10 million or more in income. (Those are 2010 figures.) In other words, as a taxpayer’s income surpasses $2 million, their effective income tax rate actually goes down, which is the opposite of what should happen under a progressive tax system.

2. Average Effective Income Tax Rates on Taxpayers Making Over $500,000 Dropped In 2010

While taxpayers making between $30,000 and $499,000 saw their average effective income tax rates go up slightly between 2009 and 2010, taxpayers making $500,000 or more actually saw their average effective tax rates go down. In fact, taxpayers making $10 million or more saw their effective tax rate drop almost eight percent from 2009 to 2010. Looking over a decade (2001 to 2010), the picture is even more dramatic: taxpayers making $10 million or more saw their average effective tax rate drop by almost 21 percent.

3. The Special Low Rate on Capital Income is Driving Effective Income Tax Rates Lower for the Wealthiest of the Wealthy

What explains the drop in the average effective tax rate for people making $10 million or more between 2009 and 2010? The IRS data reveals that these taxpayers saw their reported income from capital gains and dividend income increase to 48.5 percent of their total income in 2010, compared to 35.8 percent in 2009.  That change was driven largely by the economic recovery and rebounding stock market. Because income from investments is subject to a lower preferential rate than wages or salary, the more income taxpayers earn from these sources the lower the effective tax rate they will ultimately pay. As Citizens for Tax Justice has explained, ending the tax preference on capital gains and dividends is critical to ensuring that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.

A cynic might think it’s a little bit of theater we’re witnessing, political pantomime deliberately staged to make Republicans look like they’ve gone all reasonable and are willing to raise taxes.  Others see this week’s headlines as the meticulously orchestrated end game in a 30-year strategy laid out by Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform.  More likely it’s just a rush among journalists to tell a big story: Republicans are renouncing their fealty to Grover’s no-tax pledge and are ready to support tax hikes.

The media loves a good story, and this one is the stuff of drama. An awkward little man who rose to power as leader of an anti-government movement faces sudden mutiny, with his followers peeling off and his authority in question. In this story, Grover Norquist is part spurned lover and part emperor with no clothes.

We’re not buying it. Much as we love the idea of Grover losing his clout and credibility, there’s no evidence his followers (mostly Republicans, a few Democrats) have changed their minds about taxes. Even when they make noises about abandoning the pledge and embracing new revenues, they are nonetheless hewing to Norquist’s two-part pledge. Just listen to a few who’ve been making news with their allegedly new-found freedom:

Senator Bob Corker: “I’m not obligated on the pledge.  I made Tennesseans aware, I was just elected, the only thing I’m honoring is the oath I take when I serve, when I’m sworn in this January.” But, “[my] proposal includes pro-growth federal tax reform, which generates more static revenue… by capping federal deductions at $50,000 without raising tax rates.”

Senator Lindsey Graham: “I agree with Grover — we shouldn’t raise rates — but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can’t cap deductions and buy down debt…. I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform.”

Senator Saxby Chambliss: "Times have changed significantly, and I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge…. If we do it (Norquist's) way, then we'll continue in debt." But (he tweeted), “I’m not in favor of tax increases. I’m in favor of significant tax reform 2 lower tax rates & generate additional revenue through job growth.”

Rep. John Boehner: “….[R]aising taxes on the so-called top two percent – half of those people are small-business owners that pay their taxes through their personal income tax filing every year. The goal here is to grow the economy and to cut spending.  We’re not going to grow the economy if we raise tax rates on the top two rates.” And, “[w]e're willing to put revenue on the table as long as we're not raising rates.”

Rep. Tom Cole:  “I think we ought to take the 98 percent deal right now. It doesn’t mean I agree with raising the top two. I don’t.” And, “I signed that pledge; I'm honored to do it. I don't think in this case we would be breaking it by making what are temporary tax cuts permanent....I want to make all of them permanent, quite frankly. “

None of these Republicans characterized as leading the mutiny against Grover’s no-tax pledge is getting anywhere near raising taxes, in both senses that the pledge mandates.  It is often forgotten that support for making all the Bush tax cuts permanent amounts to another rate cut because by law, those rates are scheduled to all go up on January 1, 2013.  They may cap a deduction here or there, but that will be outweighed by the generous Bush era rate cuts they (and to a large extent, the President) promise for 2013.  And that’s exactly what the pledge they’ve all signed spells out:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Increasingly, too, the Republican House leadership is demanding revenue cuts. Where are the President’s cuts? What are the Democrats’ plans for entitlement reform? This is what Speaker Boehner is tweeting several times a day. And his lieutenant, Eric Cantor, remains clear his party is opposed to tax rate increases.

An organization like Americans for Tax Reform doesn’t spend  upwards of $24 million in one election cycle if it’s not serious about getting its way, and Grover Norquist is a serious man.  As he told Politico just this week:

“I want pro-taxpayer candidates to survive and thrive….. My goal is to have the Democrats also all take the pledge…. I'm not planning on losing the tax debate we're having right now, but the tax issue will be more powerful in 2014 and '16 than today.  It gets more powerful.”

Let’s don’t kid ourselves or help the deep pocketed anti-tax lobbying machine peddle more myths.  It’s a testament to Norquist’s thirty-year effort that four years into an historic economic crisis, a couple of closed loopholes looks like a win for the good guys.  It’s not a win. Let’s view it instead as a chink in the armor, though – and redouble our own efforts.

Image of Norquist courtesy Liberaland.

An Oklahoma Congressman who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee is the first person in Washington to speak clearly about the debate over the looming expiration of tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush.

Politico reports that Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma has argued to fellow Congressional Republicans that voting for President Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush income tax cuts for income up to $250,000 (up to $200,000 for unmarried taxpayers) is clearly a vote for cutting taxes, not raising them, and therefore does not violate a no-tax-increase pledge promoted by Grover Norquist’s organization and signed by most Republican lawmakers.

In other words, the President’s approach is a tax cut, just not quite as big of a tax cut (particularly for the rich) as the Republican Congressional leadership has advocated so far. This is illustrated in the graph below, which is from CTJ’s recent reports on the competing approaches to these expiring tax cuts.

This issue has been muddled by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and in the White House. For example, President Obama often refers to his proposal to extend the tax cuts for income up to $250,000 or $200,000 as a way to “raise revenue.”

But Rep. Cole is correct because the Bush tax cuts are temporary tax cuts that are specifically written to expire at a certain date. Any extension of part of those tax cuts is a new tax cut that reduces revenue, and is “scored” by the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office as a revenue loss.

President Obama’s approach would extend the Bush income tax cuts entirely for 98 percent of Americans and partially for the richest two percent of Americans. Rep. Cole is reported to argue that Congressional Republicans should settle right now for Obama’s proposal to extend the tax cuts entirely for 98 percent of Americans, before they expire, and debate the tax cuts for the richest two percent at a later date.

CTJ has long argued that President Obama’s proposal would extend far too many of the unaffordable Bush tax cuts, but Congress should enact his proposal for the short-term if it is the least irresponsible option being debated today. On the other hand, if anti-tax lawmakers in Congress refuse to follow Cole’s lead and instead block any tax bill that does not include an extension of all the tax cuts, then President Obama should simply allow all of the tax cuts to expire.

The logic used by most Congressional Republicans (not including Rep. Cole) is that allowing the expiration of a tax cut is the same thing as enacting a tax increase. But this logic is not applied consistently. While the Republican tax bills in the House and Senate would extend all the tax cuts first enacted under President Bush, they would allow the expiration of some expansions of the of the EITC and the Child Tax Credit that were first enacted under President Obama in 2009. That’s why the graph above shows that low- and middle-income groups would get slightly smaller average tax cuts under the approach of GOP Congressional leaders than they would get under Obama’s approach. (The difference is much more dramatic for the particular families affected.)

Somehow, followers of Grover Norquist don’t seem to consider the expiration of a tax cut to be a “tax increase” when only low- and middle-income people are affected. 

President and Lawmakers Should Resist Proposals to Extend Income Tax Cuts for $1 Million of Income

The idea that Democrats and Republicans might “compromise” by extending the Bush income tax cuts for the first $1 million a taxpayer makes is back in the news, and it’s still a terrible idea.

Bill Kristol, editor of the right-ring Weekly Standard, said on Fox News that Congressional Republicans should be willing to give in on taxes, at least when it comes to higher taxes on millionaires. That set off chatter among some political observers and media outlets that perhaps there was a room for a “compromise” with Congressional Democrats, some of whom have called for extending the Bush tax cuts for income up to $1 million, rather than $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for singles as proposed by President Obama.

Here’s why the idea is absurd: Obama’s approach to the Bush tax cuts is already a huge compromise for the many lawmakers who originally opposed the Bush tax cuts. Remember, President Obama’s proposal is to extend 78 percent of the Bush tax cuts (in terms of revenue). His proposal would extend the Bush income tax cuts entirely for 98 percent of Americans and partially for the richest two percent, and would extend much of the Bush estate tax cut so that only 0.3 percent of deaths would result in estate tax liability.

In May, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi floated the idea of extending the income tax cuts for up to $1 million of income. CTJ estimated that this would reduce the revenue savings from Obama’s approach to the income tax cuts by 43 percent. (This was later confirmed by the Joint Committee on Taxation.) We also found that people making over $1 million would get half of the additional tax cuts that would result from moving the threshold from $250,000/$200,000 to $1 million.

Married Couples Making $250k to $300k would Lose Just 2% of their Tax Cuts under Obama’s Approach. So Why Should We Extend Even More Tax Cuts?

People have asked us how extending the tax cuts for income up to $1 million could possibly help people who make over $1 million. The answer is that all of these proposals would extend reductions in income tax rates for all the income a taxpayer makes up to whatever threshold is being proposed. Obama’s proposal would extend the income tax cuts for the first $250,000 a married couple makes. That means that a married couple making $300,000 would only pay the higher, pre-Bush tax rates on $50,000 of their income (at most).

Similarly, Pelosi’s proposal (which she subsequently backed away from) would extend the income tax cuts for the first $1 million a family makes. That means that a family making $1.1 million would pay the higher, pre-Bush tax rates on just $100,000 of their income (at most).

Many people, including those who write about these issues and enact tax laws, have failed to appreciate this. Much of the debate has revolved around whether or not people who make $250,000 should be considered “rich” if they live in higher-cost areas. This debate is utterly beside the point because someone making $250,000 would not have to give up any of their tax cuts under Obama’s proposal.

In fact, a CTJ study found that married couples making between $250,000 and $300,000 would lose just 2 percent of their Bush-era income tax cuts under President Obama’s proposal. People making up to half a million dollars would keep most of their tax cuts.

Congresswoman Nita Lowey of Westchester, NY, is one of the Democrats who have made noises about moving the threshold from $250,000 to $1 million. Her comments on the issue reflect this lack of understanding.

Earlier this year, she told the Star Gazette that “If you are making $200,000 and are a fireman and a teacher, you are not feeling too rich with all the property taxes and all your expenses. But when you are making over $1 million, you ought to pay your fair share so we can support basic services in our communities.”

Even if Rep. Lowey’s district is some Bizarro World where fire fighters and teachers make $200,000 a year, they would not lose any portion of the Bush tax cuts under President Obama’s approach. And they certainly are not going to be helped by extending the tax cuts for even higher levels of income.

If Congress departs from its annual tradition of steeply reducing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), 57 percent of the tax will be paid by the richest five percent of Americans and 91 percent of the tax will be paid by the richest fifth of Americans. If Congress does reduce the AMT as usual, almost all of the tax will be paid by the richest five percent of Americans.

The AMT is one of the factors contributing to the hysteria in Washington about the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the point at which several tax cuts expire and several spending cuts go into effect at the end of this year. Lawmakers and observers often mistakenly portray the AMT as a tax that will affect middle-income Americans if it is not controlled.

The Washington Post reports that if Congress does not act, “the AMT is in line to affect about 33 million households in the 2012 tax year.” The paper also reports that as many as 60 million households could face filing delays because the IRS would have to update its forms and systems to determine who would be subject to the more expansive AMT.

But the vast bulk of actual AMT payments would come from a smaller number of very well-off Americans. CTJ’s fact sheet on the AMT shows that even if Congress fails to provide the usual AMT relief, the middle fifth of Americans would pay just one percent of the AMT. The bottom two fifths of Americans would pay virtually none of the AMT.

The AMT is a backstop tax designed to ensure that well-off Americans pay at least some minimum level of tax no matter how good they are at finding deductions, credits and loopholes that reduce their regular tax calculation. The exemptions in the AMT that keep most of us from paying it have never been indexed to rise with inflation, so Congress has increased them each year for the last several years.

More importantly, the Bush tax cuts reduced the regular income tax without making any permanent corresponding change in the AMT. In other words, most of the impact of an unrestrained AMT would be to limit the Bush tax cuts for well-off Americans. What would be so terrible about that?

There have been a lot of contradictory statements coming from Washington these days about how employment levels would be affected by President Obama’s proposal to allow the expiration of the Bush-era income tax rate reductions for the top two income tax brackets (only affecting income in excess of $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for singles). Republican House Speaker John Boehner continues to cite a discredited report claiming that 700,000 jobs will be lost, while several media outlets have recently reported that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found 200,000 jobs would be lost. Neither is right.

This is one of the confusing aspects of the debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the term sometimes used to describe the point at which the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire, and some spending cuts are scheduled to take effect, at the end of this year.  

Boehner’s Bogus 700,000 Jobs Claim

Let’s start with the most outrageous claim — that of Speaker Boehner. Last week, we explained why his call to pursue tax reform along the model of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was both disingenuous and not up to the task of addressing our current budget situation. During the same speech, Boehner mentioned an Ernst & Young report finding that “going over part of the ‘fiscal cliff’ and raising taxes on the top two rates would cost our economy more than 700,000 jobs.”

Citizens for Tax Justice explained, back in July, why the study Boehner cites (which was paid for by groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses) is bogus. To take just one example of the problems with the report, it assumes a labor supply response (the degree to which people work fewer hours in response to higher tax rates) that is nearly 10 times stronger than the non-partisan CBO assumes when it makes similar estimates on labor supply effects.

CBO’s Misunderstood 200,000 Jobs Figure

The most recent CBO estimates, which are claimed to show a potential loss of 200,000 jobs, are another story. One problem is that the CBO study examines the impact of delaying, for two years, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (and some reductions in spending) which will occur under current law. One of CBO’s findings is that extending the income tax rate reductions for the top two tax brackets (the tax cuts for the rich that Obama would like to see expire) for two years will result in 200,000 more jobs than would exist if Congress allowed these tax cuts to expire.

But if Congress decides to delay the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the rich for two years (or any amount of time), chances are extremely high that this delay will eventually become permanent rather than temporary. If President Obama caves to Republican demands to extend tax cuts for the rich now, when he seems to have a mandate from the voters to let them expire, why in the world would he do any better in the years to come?

And, permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, as Republican Congressional leaders ultimately want, would have negative long-term impacts because it would substantially increase the budget deficit and make it more difficult to make the investments that create jobs.

This is demonstrated by other CBO studies that examine the long-term impact of removing all the impacts of the so-called “fiscal cliff” permanently. A CBO report from August shows (in a table on page 37) that removing all the fiscal cliff impacts (by making the Bush tax cuts permanent and canceling the scheduled spending cuts) would reduce economic output (and thus jobs) by 2022. Gross domestic product would be down 0.4 percent and gross national product would be down 1.7 percent, compared to what would happen if Congress did nothing and simply allowed the fiscal cliff impacts to take effect. (And remember, two-thirds of the fiscal cliff’s impact on deficit reduction results from the expiration of tax cuts, rather than then spending cuts scheduled to take effect.)

Of course, the short-term does matter — we need to improve the economy right now! But even if we could be persuaded that extending the income tax cuts for income in excess of $250,000 could save 200,000 jobs in the short-term, we could think of many, many, more cost-effective ways to do this. The figures in the new CBO report show (in a table on page 7) that the cost difference between extending all the Bush tax cuts and extending all but the income tax cuts for the top two brackets would be $42 billion in 2013. Divided by 200,000, that comes to $210,000 per job saved.

In other words, CBO thinks we can save a job for every $210,000 that we give to people who make over $250,000 (or $200,000 for single taxpayers). We’re not sure how much it costs annually to help public schools hire back teachers laid off due to budget cuts, or to hire construction workers to build bridges, but we’re pretty sure it’s less than $210,000 each.

Actually, the same CBO report also shows that the cost of calling off the automatic cuts in defense and non-defense spending and the scheduled expiration of increased doctor payments from Medicare would be $64 billion by the end of 2013 and would make a difference of 800,000 jobs. Divide $64 billion by 800,000 and that comes to $80,000 per job saved. That sounds like a much better deal.

Enact Obama’s Proposal or Go Off the Fiscal Cliff

The biggest issue facing Congress right now is finding revenue to make the public investments that will help our economy and to reduce the deficit. Extending most of the Bush tax cuts, as President Obama proposes, is not a great way to achieve that, but it makes sense to enact Obama’s approach for one year to give lawmakers time to find better solutions. If anti-tax lawmakers block that approach and insist on enacting all the tax cuts, then Congress and the President should simply allow all the tax cuts to expire.

For Immediate Release: November 9, 2012

Obama’s Proposed Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts Is Costly, But Can Be Followed with Real Revenue-Raising Tax Reforms

Citizens for Tax Justice Responds to President’s Fiscal Cliff Remarks Today

Washington, DC -- Arguing that it would create certainty as he undertakes negotiations over the year-end fiscal cliff, today President Obama called on Congress to extend for another year most of the Bush-era tax cuts scheduled to expire at the end of this year under current law. He noted that such a bill has already been approved by the Senate and only needs the approval of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

“Deficit reduction is getting off to a terrible start, when the President’s opening offer to Republicans is a huge tax cut that will add $250 billion or more to federal borrowing in 2013 alone,” said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

Under the President’s approach, 78 percent of the cost of the Bush tax cuts would be extended through 2013, which is far too much. The Senate bill that the President has endorsed would extend for one year the Bush income tax cuts for the first $250,000 a married couple makes and the first $200,000 a single taxpayer makes. Most people don’t realize that this would allow taxpayers who make as much as half a million dollars a year to keep most of their Bush income tax cuts.

But Obama’s approach is certainly superior to the approach advocated by the Republican-led House, which would extend the tax cuts for all income levels, including the very richest Americans.

As the President said during his remarks today, voters want progressive revenue increases. Exit polls show that 60 percent of voters want taxes to go up for the people making over $250,000. An election night poll from Hart Research found that 62 percent of voters were sending a message that we should “make sure the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes.”

If President Obama caves to the demand of House Speaker John Boehner that Bush-era income tax rate reductions must be extended even for the richest Americans, the President will have given up the enormous leverage he has gained following the election, and will have ignored the clear mandate the voters gave him to end tax cuts for the rich.

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Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation (www.ctj.org).

According to the official exit polls on Election Day a combined 60 percent of voters support increasing taxes, with 47 percent supporting an increase in taxes on those making over $250,000 and 13 percent supporting a tax increase on everyone. Barely one third of voters think no one’s taxes should be increased. This support for higher taxes reinforces the fact that only small minority (21 percent) support the disastrous spending cuts-only approach to deficit reduction, as represented by the debt ceiling deal.

Making the voters' views even more clear, an election night poll by Hart Research found that 62 percent of voters said that they were trying to send the message that the Congress should make sure the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes. In addition, the Hart poll found that 73 percent of voters said that Medicare and Social Security benefits should be protected from cuts.

This is important: while lawmakers in DC have been focused on deficit reduction over the last couple years, most voters do not share their concern. In fact, 59 percent told pollsters on Election Day that unemployment was the most important economic issue facing the country, which is almost four times the percentage of voters that said the deficit was the most important economic issue.

The results of these Election Day polls mirror a plethora of public polling over the past couple of years on how to handle deficit reduction. Earlier this year, for example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that as many as 72 percent of Americans support increasing taxes on millionaires. Making the public preference clear, former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett compiled 19 different polls during the debt ceiling fight last year showing there is wide support among Americans for raising taxes to deal with the deficit.

Taken together, the Election Day polls once again reveal the substantial gap between the kinds of policies that the public would like Congress to pursue and the policies it’s actually pursuing. To start, the fact that the public is more concerned about the health of the economy than about deficit reduction should make Congress reverse course and actually increase government spending and investment, which is several times more stimulative to the economy than making the Bush tax cuts permanent, i.e. permanently cutting taxes. Second, Congress should recognize that to the extent that deficit reduction is needed over the long term, the public heavily favors a balanced approach that includes significant immediate revenue increases and spending cuts, rather than the spending cuts-only approach favored by Congress in recent years. Voters told Washington to get real about taxes because voters themselves are realistic about revenues. The message couldn’t be more clear.

For years, conservatives and many moderates have believed that signing Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge was a ticket to electoral success. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But on election night 2012, it began to look like the pledge was actually a liability as signatories to it were sent packing by voters in states from New Hampshire to Ohio to California. While the results are still coming in, at least 55 House incumbents or candidates and 24 Senators or Senate hopefuls who signed the pledge lost on Election Day.  That means in the next Congress, the number of pledge-signers will be 264 at most, down from 279, and Grover’s fans could potentially become the minority in the House, with only 216 seats, according to reports from Bloomberg (link not available).

Rather than a boon, in many Senate races signing Grover’s pledge turned out to be a burden this election year. In the Ohio Senatorial race for instance, Republican State Treasurer Josh Mandel attempted to portray himself as an independent and principled thinker, but this image was tarnished by the fact that he had signed the no-tax pledge. In fact, Mandel gave a pretty limp response to his opponent, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (who ultimately won the race), who pointed out during a debate that signing the pledge equaled “giving away your right to think.”

Similarly in Massachusetts, tax policy became the focal point of difference between Republican Senator Scott Brown and Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren. During a debate between the candidates, Warren warned voters that “instead of working for the people of Massa­chusetts” Brown had “taken a pledge to work for Grover Norquist.” Such criticism helped voters see that he was not as independent from conservative influence and the Republican Party as he liked to portray himself in deep blue Massachusetts.

Earlier this year, the stranglehold of the no-tax pledge on the Republican Party and candidates was already showing signs of cracking as a substantial number of Republican candidates either refused to sign the pledge or repudiated their former fealty to it. Leading the charge, Virginia Republican Representative Scott Rigell advised fellow Republicans to not sign the pledge and ran explicitly on the platform of taking a balanced approach to deficit reduction. In contrast to many of his colleagues who lost running on the no-tax pledge, Rigell was easily re-elected to his House seat.

Moving forward, we expect more lawmakers will realize that taking a dogmatic anti-tax approach is not only bad policy, but that it’s also increasingly bad politics.

Picture of Norquist in a bathtub courtesy the New Yorker magazine. 

If yesterday’s election was a referendum on taxes, what voters rejected was the tired oldargument that cutting taxes is good for an ailing economy, and that is a welcome development. For his part, President Obama has said winning would give him a mandate to raise revenue by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, one of his campaign promises. Republicans have said if he follows through on that promise, it will destroy any chance of the two parties working together in the coming years.

As we head into the lame duck Congressional session that begins next week and look ahead to 2013, let’s review the (frankly) uninspiring policy options both parties are proposing – proposing for a country where tax rates are at historic lows, income inequality is at historic highs, tax avoidance by the wealthy and corporations is epidemic and revenues are anemic.

Sadly, President Obama’s “balanced” fiscal plan comes up short.  Far from raising needed revenues or “raising taxes on the rich” as many describe it, the President’s plan actually cuts taxes dramatically for most Americans. If President Obama's plan to keep all but the high end Bush tax cuts in place is implemented, the lion's share of the unaffordable and unfair tax cuts pushed through by President George W. Bush more than a decade ago would remain in place for another year, through the end of 2013 – at a one-year cost of $250 billion or more.

Whether the President succeeds in getting a grand bargain that includes a one year extension of most of the Bush tax cuts, or we end up with the Republicans’ latest idea for a six month “bridge” across the fiscal cliff, what both parties are saying is that the time they buy with these bargains will be used to rewrite the tax code in a permanent way. And while we agree that some kind of tax code overhaul is necessary, any overhaul that fails to raise revenue and increase tax fairness is not worthy of the word “reform.” 

Our corporate tax system is currently in a shambles, with hugely profitable multinational corporations aggressively using shady tax dodges as well as tax breaks enacted by Congress to zero out their tax bills.  Unfortunately, most Democrats and Republicans are listening to corporate lobbyists’ complaints that the U.S. statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent is too high.  This complaint is largely baseless.  We studied most of the Fortune 500 corporations that were consistently profitable in recent years and found that they collectively paid just 18.5 percent of their profits in taxes, and many paid nothing at all.  Still, most plans for corporate tax reform from both sides of the aisle call for closing loopholes only to lower the rate, resulting in no new revenues for the Treasury. 

We acknowledge, however, that Democrats have articulated some encouraging goals. In Congress, for example, Senator Carl Levin is actively working to close loopholes that allow corporations to shift profits to offshore tax havens. And President Obama has indicated he wants to restrict the most egregious corporate loophole, the rule allowing corporations to “defer” paying taxes on their foreign profits (which are often U.S. profits artificially shifted offshore).  Contrasted with the Republican Party’s support of a territorial tax system that permanently widens that loophole and exempts all foreign profits, the President’s corporate tax framework looks progressive, even if it is woefully short on detail.

Our view, though, is that ending “deferral” entirely is the only road to real reform of the corporate tax. In this global economy, deferral is the massive hole in which our most profitable companies can legally hide their profits, even as those profits are at historic highs.  

And the personal income tax, with or without the Bush tax cuts in place, contains expensive and unwarranted loopholes that make it possible for wealthy investors to pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income workers – as Warren Buffett has so helpfully illustrated.  There is a simple way to fix this, of course, and that is to tax capital gains and dividends the same way we tax income from salaries and wages.  Other provisions of the personal income tax (like tax breaks for charitable deductions on appreciated property and the “carried interest” loophole) can be reformed or eliminated so that they no longer provide tax shelters for the richest Americans.  But it’s the low rates on capital gains (and dividends) that overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthiest Americans, and tax reform that maintains a progressive federal income tax must end that special break.

Tax policy is often inscrutable, and one aspect that can complicate and thwart a constructive public discussion is the issue of which “baseline” or assumptions an analysis begins with.  For example, there are those who characterize the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts as a tax increase.  Don’t believe them. Nor should you believe those who say that President Obama’s proposal to extend most of the Bush tax cuts would “raise revenue.” By law, the Bush tax cuts are still temporary and are set to expire at the end of this year.  Allowing them all to expire is not a tax increase, and the President’s approach to extending most of them would result in less revenue (and a much higher budget deficit) than we’d get if Congress just did nothing, let the Bush cuts (and scores of smaller temporary tax expenditures) expire and went home.

Indeed, Congress simply going home next month and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on January 1, 2013 would not be the worst result.  You hear people say that we can’t possibly allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire because they benefit low- and middle-income Americans who need help, especially right now. But this is no reason to enact a bill that also extends tax cuts for the rich, which are far larger, and that’s exactly what it would mean to extend the Bush tax cuts wholesale. We’ve estimated that if Congressional Republicans get their way and all the Bush tax cuts are extended, 32 percent of the benefits would go to the richest one percent of Americans and just one percent of the benefits would go to the poorest fifth of Americans. Under President Obama’s approach, 11 percent of the benefits of the extended tax cuts would go to the richest one percent of Americans and three percent of the benefits would go to the poorest fifth of Americans. Clearly Obama’s plan is the fairer one, though it’s hardly something to celebrate.

The White House and Congress will be working on a deal during the lame duck session to tide us over through 2013. If the only deal they can reach is a bad deal – one that preserves all those expensive Bush tax cuts – the President should reject that deal.  We believe the public would support him if he did.

While we aren’t enthusiastic about any of the short term deals we know of, we are hopeful that 2013 can bring positive change to our tax code if Congress follows some basic principles.  Like the historic tax reform of 1986, reform next year should close loopholes in the personal and corporate income taxes.  Unlike ’86, however, it should not be revenue-neutral.  Today, following decades of tax cuts, we have shrinking revenues and swelling deficits.  So the next tax overhaul must raise revenues sufficient to fund the government and provide services citizens deserve and depend on. Real reform will also leave the code fairer than it is today by closing loopholes that have slowly eroded the progressivity the federal income tax was designed to deliver. We know that when you include local and state taxes, lower and middle income Americans are, in fact, paying their fare share.  At Citizens for Tax Justice, our mission is advocating for those taxpayers, and we will continue to do so into 2013 as a still divided Congress and Democratic White House debate reform of the entire tax code.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice shows that the Making Work Pay Credit, a tax credit that was in effect in 2009 and 2010, is better targeted towards low- and middle-income families than the payroll tax cut in effect today, at half the cost. It is dramatically more targeted to these families than the Bush tax cuts, at just over a sixth of the cost.

Prominent Washington figures and media outlets have suggested in recent days that either the payroll tax cut might be extended or the Making Work Pay Credit might be revived to help the economy.

Read the report.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has proposed to make permanent the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs and also enact new, additional tax cuts that would be paid for by limiting tax expenditures (special breaks or loopholes in the tax code). Romney recently suggested that his new tax cuts could be paid for by limiting itemized deductions to $25,000 per tax return, which we estimate would offset just 36 percent of their costs. The percentage of Romney’s new tax cuts offset by this limit on itemized deductions would vary dramatically by state.

Read the report.

When most people think of major foreign policy issues facing the U.S., they rarely think of taxes and budget deficits. But during the foreign policy-focused final presidential debate on Monday night, the candidates delved into tax and budget issues – domestic ones, that is, but not those related to foreign policy. Below, we break down the most important tax policy moments of the night.

The Debt “Crisis”
Romney came out swinging saying that President Barack Obama had put the U.S. on a path “heading towards Greece” and that by the end of his second term Obama will have pushed the debt to $20 trillion. He added that a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called the debt “the biggest national security threat we face.” There is a lot to unpack in this line of attack.

To start, even alarmist estimates, like those by the conservative Heritage Foundation, show that on its “current” path the U.S. still has twenty years before it reaches a debt-to-GDP ratio on par with Greece. More importantly, however, such projections assume that Congress and the President will extend the Bush tax cuts and reverse the spending cuts contained within the sequester; and in truth, that combination is the most serious long term debt threat U.S. faces.

It is also true that Obama’s approach to our long term debt comes up short. Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) has criticized Obama’s plan that would increase the deficit by $4.2 trillion over the next ten years by extending a full 78 percent of the Bush tax cuts. But it’s quite a thing for Romney to point fingers at Obama regarding the debt since Romney is proposing an approach far and away more reckless, one that includes about $5 trillion in additional tax cuts on top of the $5.4 trillion cost of a full extension of the Bush tax cuts over the next ten years, which he also endorses.

Compounding this, Romney has not proposed enough specific spending cuts to get anywhere close to balancing the budget. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has found that Romney’s number one recommendation to cut the deficit during the debate, his plan to “get rid” of Obamacare, would actually increase the deficit by $210 billion over ten years. In addition, even under Romney’s running-mate Representative Paul Ryan’s draconian budget plan, the debt would still increase to $19 trillion in 2016 by Ryan’s own estimations.

Making Romney’s budget math even more fantastical (as Obama correctly pointed out) is his proposal to increase military spending by about $2 trillion over the next ten years compared to Obama’s budget proposal, and about $2.5 trillion compared to what the sequester deal would require.  

Balancing Budgets at the State Level
To support his idea that it’s possible to enact massive tax cuts while also balancing the budget at the federal level, Romney pointed to his record as governor in Massachusetts, where he said he was able to balance the budget four years in a row while still cutting taxes “19 times.” In actuality, Romney was only able to balance the budget because he took the responsible position of actually raising more, rather than less revenue as governor.

According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, budgets enacted under Romney raised around $700 million in additional revenue annually through higher user fees (a popular approach of raising revenue among anti-tax governors) and closing tax loopholes. This increase in revenue outweighed the cost of his 19 tax cuts, which were mostly small and included gimmicky measures like a sales tax holiday. By contrast, Romney is now proposing tax cuts that would dwarf the revenues he would raise through loophole closing.

Candidates Barely Touch on International Tax Dodging

As we predicted, the candidates barely made a passing reference to the problems facing our international tax system, even though, for example, the U.S. loses an astounding $100 to $150 billion in tax revenues each year to offshore tax havens. The only mention of international tax issues came when Obama noted that the current system “rewards companies that are shipping jobs overseas” and when he repeated the point previously made by Vice President Joe Biden that the territorial tax system Romney supports will create 800,000 jobs – but in places like China rather than the U.S.

Biden and Obama are right, and they cite this study showing that the territorial tax system (PDF) Romney proposes would even further encourage corporations to move jobs offshore and disguise their U.S. income as foreign income in order to avoid U.S. taxes. Rather than moving backwards with a territorial tax system, the U.S. should end deferral of taxes on foreign profits by U.S. corporations, which would immediately solve the issue of companies holding $1.5 trillion of income offshore to avoid taxes on the billions they owe in taxes on that income.

As President Obama and Governor Romney discuss foreign policy in their final debate, there’s a major issue that they will, unfortunately, probably ignore: the tangle of international tax rules that allow offshore tax dodging.

The U.S. tax system is already in a mess when it comes to the rules we use to determine how profits of multinational companies are taxed. President Obama has proposed some steps to rein in the worst abuses, but most of these are relatively timid or vague. Meanwhile, Romney proposes that the U.S. follow the example of other countries that have a “territorial” system, which has facilitated high-profile tax avoidance schemes by major multinational corporations. On this issue, the U.S. needs to show leadership that has been lacking so far.

Here are the basics: The U.S. could either have a “worldwide” tax system, in which we tax the offshore profits of our corporations (but provide a credit for foreign taxes paid, to prevent double-taxation) or the U.S. could have a “territorial” tax system, which exempts the offshore profits of our corporations from U.S. taxes. What we have now is a hybrid of the two systems. The U.S. does tax the offshore profits of U.S. corporations and provides a credit for foreign taxes paid, but also allows the corporations to “defer” (delay indefinitely) those U.S. taxes, until the profits are brought to the U.S.

Under the current rules, U.S. corporations have a reason to prefer offshore profits over U.S. profits, because they benefit from the rule allowing them to “defer” U.S. taxes on offshore profits indefinitely. So they may shift operations (and jobs) to a country with lower taxes, or engage in convoluted transactions that make their U.S. profits appear to be earned by subsidiaries in countries with no (or almost no) corporate tax (i.e., offshore tax havens).

The offshore subsidiary may be nothing more than a post office box in the Cayman Islands. CTJ recently explained that Nike, Microsoft, Apple and several other companies essentially admit in their public documents that they engage in these tricks.

If allowing corporations to “defer” U.S. taxes on offshore profits causes them to prefer offshore profits over U.S. profits, then eliminating U.S. taxes on offshore profits would logically increase that preference, and increase these abuses. And that’s exactly what a territorial system, which Romney supports, would do.

CTJ has explained in a fact sheet and a more detailed report that we should move in the opposite direction by simply repealing “deferral” so that we have a true “worldwide” tax system. A CTJ report on options to raise revenue explains that repealing deferral would raise $583 billion over a decade.

President Obama has proposed far more limited steps. His most recent budget blueprint proposes to raise $148 billion over ten years with a package of provisions to crack down on the worst abuses of deferral. (The official revenue estimators for Congress projected that the provisions would raise a little more, $168 billion over a decade.)

These proposals would do some good. For example, one would end the practice of companies taking immediate deductions against their U.S. taxes for interest expenses associated with their offshore operations while they defer (not pay) the U.S. taxes on the resulting offshore profits indefinitely. Another would help ensure that the foreign tax credit, which is supposed to prevent double-taxation of foreign profits, does not exceed the amount necessary to achieve that goal. Still another would reduce abuses involving intangible property like patents and trademarks, which are particularly easy to shift to tax haven-based subsidiaries that are really no more than a post office box.

But none of these reforms proposed as part the President’s budget really addresses the underlying problem with a deferral system or a territorial system: The IRS cannot figure out which portion of a multinational corporation’s profits are truly generated in the U.S. and which portion is truly generated overseas. If a U.S. corporation tells the IRS that a transaction with an offshore subsidiary wiped out its profits, the IRS cannot challenge the company unless it can prove that the transaction was unreasonable. And that’s difficult to do, especially when the transaction involves some product or service that is not comparable to anything else in the market (like a new invention, pharmaceutical, or software program).

President Obama has also proposed, as part of his “framework” for corporate tax reform, a minimum tax on offshore corporate profits. Because he has not yet specified any rate for this minimum tax, it’s impossible to say whether it would be effective. If the rate is set extremely low, then it would change very little. In theory, if the rate was set high enough, it would almost have the same effect as ending deferral — but no one in the administration is talking about anything that dramatic. (Read CTJ’s response to the President’s “framework” for corporate tax reform.)

There are some members of Congress looking very seriously at offshore tax dodging by corporations (like Senator Carl Levin). But serious leadership is unlikely to come from the presidential candidates anytime soon.

Photo of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Cayman Islands Flag via Austen Hufford, Justin Sloan, and J. Stephen Con Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0 

The discussion over tax policy during Tuesday night’s town hall debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a case study in how candidates can make selective use of facts. Below we bring some context to some of the most significant points made about tax policy during the debate.

Canada and the “High” Corporate Tax Rate

One area of unfortunate mutual agreement between Obama and Romney is, as Obama put it during the debate, that our corporate tax rate is “too high.” Backing this notion up, Romney noted that Canada’s corporate tax rate is now “15 percent” while the U.S.’s “35 percent” and thus leaves the U.S. in a less “competitive” position.

The primary problem is that both candidates are focusing on the statutory rate (the written law), which is relatively high in the United States, rather than the effective rate (the percentage of profits that corporations actually pay in taxes), which is far lower than the 35 percent statutory rate due to tax loopholes that plague our corporate tax system. In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) has found that large profitable corporations pay about half the statutory rate on average, while some companies like General Electric and Verizon pay nothing at all in corporate taxes.

Turning back to Romney’s comparison of the U.S. corporate tax rate with Canada’s, a CTJ analysis of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data actually found that the U.S. collects half as much in corporate tax revenue as Canada when measured as a percentage of GDP.

Rewriting the Legacy of George W. Bush

Getting to the core of many undecided voters’ concerns about his candidacy, one of the questioners asked Romney how his policies would differ from those of former President George W. Bush. Romney responded that he, unlike Bush, would balance the budget and that Obama had actually doubled the size of the annual Bush deficits.

What’s bizarre about this statement is that Romney is saying he will balance the budget, unlike Bush, while simultaneously doubling down on many of the same policies that drove the Bush deficits to begin with. For example, the Bush tax cuts added $2.5 trillion to the deficits between 2001-2010, yet Romney supports extending the entirety of the Bush tax cuts, which over the next ten year are estimated to cost $5.4 trillion (twice as much as in the first decade). Building on this, Romney is actually proposing roughly $5 trillion in more tax cuts over the next ten years, the costs of which he cannot offset without taxing the middle-class (which he pledges not to do).

Romney was also off base when he said that Obama doubled the federal budget deficit. For one, Obama came into office 3 months after the start of fiscal year 2009, and CBO had already projected a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for that year. In addition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that the economic downturn, the bailouts, the war costs, and Bush-era tax cuts, all of which began under the Bush Administration, account for most of the budget deficit.

Taking an Interest in the Preferential Tax Rate for Capital Gains

During the discussion over which loopholes and deductions Romney would close, Obama rightfully noted that Romney has already taken off the table any option that would close or reduce the biggest tax loophole for the wealthy, the preferential rate for capital gains. As CTJ noted in a recent report, ending the preferential rate would improve tax fairness, raise revenue, and simplify the tax code. Surprisingly, Romney did not offer any defense of the preferential capital gains rate during the debate, which could be explained by the fact that he did not want to bring further attention to the fact that he personally saved $1.2 million in taxes due to the lower rate.

Instead of defending the merits of a lower rate, Romney instead highlighted his plan to eliminate taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000.  While this sounds like a boon to lower and middle-income taxpayers, the reality is that the only 6 percent of all capital gains income and 17 percent of dividend income is earned by the bottom 80 percent, so it would apply to relatively few taxpayers.

While the presidential candidates debate whether the tax code rewards companies that move operations overseas, a new CTJ report shows that ten companies, including Apple and Microsoft, indicate in their own financial statements that most of their foreign earnings have never been taxed – anywhere. The statements the companies file with the SEC reveal that if they brought their foreign profits back to the U.S., they would pay the full 35 percent U.S. tax rate, which is how we can surmise that no foreign taxes were paid that would offset any of the 35 percent U.S. tax rate.

The most likely explanation of this is that these profits, instead of being earned by real, economically productive operations in developed countries, are actually U.S. profits that have been shifted overseas to offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. This same type of offshore profit shifting was the focus of a recent Senate hearing where Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard found themselves in the hot seat.

In the tax footnote to their financial statements, companies disclose the amount of their foreign subsidiaries’ earnings which are “indefinitely reinvested,” that is, parked offshore. Calling it "indefinitely reinvested" allows them to embellish their bottom lines, on paper anyway, because they don't have to account for the cost of U.S. taxes they'd pay on that offshore income. But, they must disclose the total amount of their unrepatriated profits, and also estimate the U.S. tax that would be due if those earnings were repatriated.

A new CTJ analysis of the Fortune 500 found that, although 285 companies reported unrepatriated foreign earnings, only 47 companies disclosed in their financial statements an estimate of the U.S. income tax liability they would face upon repatriation, although that disclosure is required by accounting standards. The remaining companies hid behind a common dodge that estimating the U.S. tax would be “not practicable.” Legions of lawyers and accountants help these companies avoid taxes but can’t calculate the costs to the U.S. treasury?

Which Fortune 500 Companies are Shifting Profits to Offshore Tax Havens? ranks the 47 companies that do disclose this figure by the tax rate they’d pay if they repatriated their foreign earnings. Seven of the top ten are members, either directly or through a trade association, of the WIN America campaign that is lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday (aka corporate tax amnesty) that would let them bring the foreign earnings home at a super-low rate.

It’s not as though the rest of the Fortune 500 is innocent. CTJ’s report notably says nothing about the 238 Fortune 500 companies that have admitted having offshore hoards but refuse to calculate how much tax they’d pay. These companies include suspected tax dodgers like Google and HP, each of which has subsidiaries in known tax haven countries. In all likelihood, many of these other companies have been as successful in avoiding tax as the ten companies ranked highest in CTJ’s report.  

The new CTJ report is another reminder of what U.S.-based multinationals will do to avoid paying tax and why changing the U.S. international tax system to a territorial system is such a bad idea. Moving to a territorial tax system, which is supported by Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan, would give companies a permanent tax holiday and encourage even more aggressive offshore profit shifting. President Obama has proposed corporate tax reform that would include a “minimum tax” on foreign earnings, although the rate has not been specified. And Congress, it seems, will be taking up overhaul of the corporate tax code next year, so watch this space for the facts about corporate America’s campaign to make dodging taxes even easier.

In last night’s presidential debate, Governor Romney pointed out that President Obama’s pension holds investments in Chinese companies and even in a Cayman Islands trust. Unlike Romney’s self-directed Individual Retirement Account, the President’s pension is in a system over which the President has absolutely no control; it’s an account with the Illinois General Assembly Defined Benefit Pension Plan. To somehow compare that with the vast wealth that Romney has personally placed offshore is ludicrous.

While Romney was at the helm of Bain Capital, the private equity firm began forming all of its new funds in the Cayman Islands through labyrinthine structures that allow investors to legally avoid – and illegally evade – tax. In addition, Gov. Romney has a Bermuda corporation which has never been explained and, of course, there is that famous Swiss bank account. Over 250 of the 379 pages of Romney’s 2011 tax return are devoted to disclosing transactions with offshore corporations and partnerships.

If Romney was trying to make the point that most investors have some holdings in companies outside of the U.S., we buy that. But if Romney’s point was that facilitating tax avoidance and evasion through complicated offshore structures is both normal and acceptable or in any way ordinary, we could not disagree more.

During Tuesday night’s presidential candidate town hall debate, President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney went at it again over, among other things, their respective approaches to tax policy.  While both candidates come up short on proposing fair and sustainable tax policy, Romney was downright brazen in misrepresenting the facts about his own and Obama’s tax plans.  Here we break down his three biggest whoppers.

Romney Says “Of Course” His Tax Plan Adds Up

After months of criticism from all sides for failing to specify which deductions he would eliminate in order to make his tax plan add up,  Romney floated the idea during the debate of having a cap where each American gets up to $25,000 of deductions and credits. As Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) noted when Romney first floated a $17,000 cap a couple weeks ago, the reality is that even if Romney eliminated every single deduction for the wealthy, he would still violate his promise to “not under any circumstances reduce the share that's being paid by the highest income taxpayers.” The tax cuts in his plan (which he does specify) would result in a net tax reduction of $250,000 on average for millionaires, even if they had to give up all the tax expenditures they currently enjoy.

Seeming to contradict his own point about the share of taxes the wealthiest Americans would pay, Romney also said that he particularly wanted to bring personal income tax rates down for individuals at the high end of the income spectrum because so many small businesses are taxed under the personal income tax. Romney is again missing the point that only 3 to 5 percent of business owners (and the richest ones at that) would be affected by a high end rate change, and it would only be on the profits those business owners take home.

When Romney defends the arithmetic of his tax plan, he emphasizes that he will not reduce “the share” of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans. We suspect this is so he can argue later that since his across-the-board tax breaks would reduce the tax burden on different income groups equally, even if it gives the wealthiest the largest tax breaks, the ratios stay the same. Of course, it would be impossible for Romney to cut high end rates without breaking his pledge to make his plan revenue-neutral. But it’s already been established (as discussed above) that his revenue pledge conflicts with his pledge to make these specific tax cuts and pay for them without raising the net taxes paid by the middle-class.

Romney Claims Middle Class Will See $4,000 Rise in Taxes Under Obama

Trying to deflect the argument that he would have no choice but to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for his across-the-board tax cuts, Romney tried to throw it back at Obama, saying that “people in the middle class will see $4,000 per year in higher taxes” under the President’s budget plan. This is jujitsu of epic proportions.

First, Romney misrepresents a study by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) which is NOT about higher taxes that would be levied next year, as the Governor suggested, but rather provides an estimate of what people who make between $100,000 and $200,000 could have to pay to cover their share of the debt accumulated under President Obama’s policies (both those implemented and those proposed).  Second, he’s not even talking about the middle class, because a truly middle-income taxpayer makes much less than $100,000.  Third, and most importantly, if Romney wants to say that tax proposals that would increase the debt are equivalent to future tax increases, then he needs to admit that his own plan, which likely increases the debt much more than Obama’s, is equivalent to a massive tax increase.  Indeed, Romney still hasn’t explained how he would pay for $10 trillion in tax cuts and another trillion in increased defense spending over the next ten years.

Romney Says He will Create 12 Million Jobs

One of Romney’s boldest claims of the night was that he had a “five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years.” The numbers the Romney campaign uses to make this assertion, however, are so blatantly bunk that Romney earned 4 Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s fact checker.

Romney’s 12 million jobs claim relies most heavily on a study of Romney’s tax plan which found that it would create seven million jobs over 10 (as opposed to four) years. That study (PDF), however, rests on two false foundations. First, it overestimates the positive economic impact of tax reform, an impact which has been proven to be minimal at best. Second, because Romney has not yet laid out a plan that is even mathematically possible or detailed enough to model, the study necessarily rests on a whole series of assumptions about the plan that border on fictitious.

Romney’s evidence supporting the power of his plan to create the other five million jobs is even weaker than those he claims from tax reform. Three million of his alleged new jobs are among those that would already be created over the next eight (not four) years under current energy policies, some of which Romney actually opposes. Similarly misleading, Romney regularly points to a study with a speculative estimate that Chinese violation of U.S. intellectual property rights is costing two million jobs.  Romney wants us to infer that he would somehow save two million jobs by preventing China from pursuing this practice, even though he has never identified a truly effective tool the U.S. has at its disposal for changing the behavior of Chinese counterfeiters.

The first and only Vice Presidential Debate of the election season between Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan featured a spirited discussion over their competing visions for tax policy. While watching, we began to genuinely wonder if Biden had spent time reading Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) materials considering that time and again he made precisely the points CTJ has been making for years. Ryan, on the other hand, repeatedly misrepresented the tax system and the two tickets’ tax plans.

Below we breakdown the most important tax policy moments in the debate:

1. Biden Highlights the Regressiveness of Extending All the Bush Tax Cuts

While the presidential candidates largely ignored the Bush tax cuts in their debate last week, Biden put them front and center during the VP debate when he pointed out that Romney and Ryan are proposing the “the continuation of a tax cut that will give an additional $500 billion in tax cuts to 120,000 families” over the next ten years, compared to the Obama Administration plan for the Bush tax cuts.

Biden’s formulation here is a little confusing but not incorrect. Of course, President Obama proposes to allow the Bush income tax cuts to expire for income in excess of $250,000 for couples and in excess of $200,000 for singles, and only 2 percent of taxpayers would lose any portion of their Bush income tax cuts under this approach. The administration has stated that this would cost $849 billion less, over ten years, than extending the Bush income tax cuts for all income levels, while our own estimate is that it would cost $887 billion less over ten years. Pretty close.

Biden is focusing specifically on the part of this figure that would benefit the richest 120,000 families, apparently based on figures from the Tax Policy Center. Our own calculations essentially back up Biden’s point. We estimate that the richest taxpayers with incomes exceeding $2 million in 2013 (the richest 135,000 families in 2013) would receive about 57 percent of the income tax cuts that would otherwise expire under Obama’s approach, which comes out to $507 billion over ten years.

2. Ryan Promises the Mathematically Impossible

In defending Romney’s tax plan, Ryan reiterated their ticket’s commitment to “lower tax rates across the board” and to “close loopholes,” while simultaneously sticking to the “bottom lines” of not raising the deficit, not increasing taxes on the middle class or lowering the share of income that is borne by high-income earners. But Ryan is defending a plan that CTJ has found is mathematically impossible. Even if Romney and Ryan eliminated all the tax expenditures for wealthy taxpayers that they have put on the table, our analysis has found that their across-the-board tax cuts would still require them to give an average tax break of $250,000 to individuals making over $1 million, which would violate their pledge not to lower the share of taxes borne by high-income earners.

Ryan said during the debate that there are six studies showing that their plan is possible, but Biden correctly pointed out that even the studies Ryan cites conclude that the plan would require increasing taxes on taxpayers who do not have particularly high incomes.

3. Biden Calls Ryan Out for Taking Capital Gains Tax Breaks Off the Table

One of the major reasons that the Romney campaign’s tax plan would be incapable of eliminating enough tax expenditures to add up is that Romney has specifically said that he would keep the tax breaks for capital gains and stock dividends. During the debate, Biden noted that this shows the lack of seriousness in Romney’s loophole-targeting approach because Romney has exempted the “biggest loophole” of all - the “capital gains loophole.”  As CTJ pointed out in a recent report, ending the capital gains tax preference would tremendously improve fairness, raise revenue, and simplify the tax code in one fell swoop. 

4. Ryan and Biden Dispute the Definition of Small Businesses

Repeating Romney’s line on small businesses from the first presidential debate, Ryan claimed that Obama is going to raise taxes on small businesses and kill 710,000 jobs by doing so. The reality, however, is that only the 3 to 5 percent richest business owners (individuals who could hardly be called “small business” owners) would lose any of their tax breaks, and the job loss claims are complete malarkey.

5. Biden Takes on Romney and Ryan’s Commitment to Grover Norquist

During the first presidential debate, Romney reiterated his pledge to not raise a single penny in revenue, even if the revenue was raised as part of a deal that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases. Biden took issue with this commitment saying that “instead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class we're going to level the playing field.”

Biden is absolutely right that we need to reject the extreme anti-tax approach taken by individuals like Grover Norquist and instead embrace a balanced approach to deficit reduction. The question for Romney is when he will recognize that a balanced approach is not only what the American people want, but also what business experts support as well.

6. Ryan Misrepresents History of 1986 Tax Reform

Responding to the question of what specific loopholes he and Romney are proposing to close, Ryan attempted to dodge the question by arguing that they should not lay out specific loopholes they want to close because doing so would prevent them from following the model that allowed Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill to produce the 1986 tax reform. The reality, however, as recounted by CTJ Director Bob McIntyre – whose work was integral to the passage of the 1986 reform – is that Reagan’s Treasury Department released a detailed tax reform plan explicitly laying out exactly which tax expenditures the Administration would like to see closed. In other words, the 1986 tax reform experience actually proves the opposite of what Ryan is saying about vagueness being some kind of asset.

7. Biden Revives Romney’s 47% Remark

Continuing his efforts to upend tax myths during the debate, Biden took issue with Romney’s earlier statement that 47 percent of Americans aren’t paying their fair share, and he noted that many middle income people actually “pay more effective tax than Governor Romney in his federal income tax.” Biden was right to push back against the notion that any Americans are not contributing their fair share since, on average, any American’s share of total taxes is already roughly equal to their share of total income. In addition, CTJ has found that individuals making around $60,000 do in fact pay an effective federal tax rate of 21.3% on average, which is a lot compared to Romney’s tax rate of 14% in 2011.

8. Ryan Claims Obamacare Includes 12 Middle Class Tax Hikes

During the debate, Ryan asserted, “Of the 21 tax increases in Obamacare, 12 of them hit the middle class.” The reality, according to a CTJ analysis, is that 95 percent of the tax increases included in the healthcare reform legislation would be borne by either companies or households making over $250,000. Adding to this, Ryan’s specific point about the 12 tax provisions is mostly false because 4 of the 12 provisions are not really taxes at all.

9. Biden Stumbles on the Primary Cause of Great Recession

The only significant tax policy stumble for Biden came when he argued that Ryan helped create the Great Recession by “voting to put two wars on a credit card, to at the same time put a prescription drug benefit on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.” The problem of course is that the Great Recession was due primarily to a financial crisis, not some sudden crisis in government spending and deficits.

While extraordinary increases in deficit spending and tax cuts for the rich during President George W. Bush’s presidency, (which Ryan did vote for), did not cause the recession, they certainly caused an explosion in the national debt. In fact, if continued, the Bush tax cuts and the cost of the wars will account for nearly half of the public debt by 2019.

10. Ryan Wrong on How Much Revenue Could Be Raised by Taxes on the Rich

In an attempt to discredit the idea that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans will help fix the deficit, Ryan argued that “if you taxed every person and successful business making over $250,000 at 100 percent, it would only run the government for 98 days.” To start, the entire premise of this argument is bogus because the Obama administration is not proposing a revenue-only approach to deficit reduction; in fact it has already signed into law over $2 trillion in spending cuts. In addition, Ryan ironically failed to discern, even by his own calculations, that 98 days worth of government spending would be more than enough to close the projected budget deficits and would be more than enough to pay down the national debt in the coming years.

While most commentators have focused on the back-and-forth between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney over tax rates and deficit reduction during the first presidential debate, we paid extra close attention to what the candidates said about corporate and small business taxes. Unfortunately, we found what both candidates had to say really wanting.

Corporate Tax Reform

Early in the debate, Obama noted that he and Romney have something of a consensus over corporate taxes in that they both believe that “our corporate tax rate is too high.” If there's such an agreement, it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding. While the U.S. has a relatively high statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent, the effective corporate tax rate (the percentage of profits that corporations actually pay in taxes) is far lower because of the loopholes they use to shield their profits from taxes. CTJ has found that large profitable corporations pay about half the statutory rate on average, while some companies like General Electric and Verizon pay nothing at all in corporate taxes.

President Obama proposes to close corporate tax loopholes, but would give the revenue savings right back to corporations as a reduction in the statutory tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, resulting in no change in revenue, as outlined in his corporate tax reform framework released earlier this year. (During the debate Obama actually said he’d lower the statutory rate to 25 percent, which seems more likely a misstatement than an intentional policy shift.)

In contrast, 250 non-profits, consumer groups, labor unions and faith-based groups have called for a corporate tax reform that actually raises revenue in order to pay for critical government investments and reduce the budget deficit.

Of course, Governor Romney also proposes a deep cut in the statutory corporate tax rate (to 25 percent) and is far more vague on whether he would bother to offset the costs.

Romney took issue with Obama’s claim during the debate that the tax code currently allows companies to take a deduction for moving plants overseas, saying that he had “no idea” what Obama was talking about and that if such a deduction really exists that he may “need to get a new accountant.” Technically, Obama is right that the tax code currently allows companies to take a deduction for business expenses of moving a plant overseas, but he leaves out the fact that companies are allowed to deduct most business expenses, including those associated with moving facilities. In any case, Romney certainly does not to need to hire a new accountant.

What both candidates missed during this discussion was that our current tax system does in fact encourage corporations to move operations overseas by allowing them to defer taxes on foreign profits. To his credit, Obama proposed, as part of his 2013 budget and in his framework for corporate tax reform, several reforms to the international tax system that would reduce the size of this tax break, although he has not gone as far as to call for an end to deferral entirely. In contrast, Romney wants to blow a giant hole in our corporate tax by moving the US to territorial tax system, under which US companies would pay nothing on offshore profits.

Small Business Taxes

During the debate Romney revived a classic tax myth by claiming that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for income over $250,000 will harm small businesses because a lot of businesses “are taxed not at the corporate tax rate, but at the individual rate.” Obama pushed back noting that he had “lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times” and that under his plan “97 percent of small businesses would not see their income taxes go up.”

A Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analysis found that only the 3 to 5 percent richest business owners would be lose any their tax breaks under Obama’s plan. The CTJ report also points out that if you’re a business owner, tax breaks affect how much of your profits you can take home, but not whether or not you have profits. A business owner will make investments that create jobs if, and only if, such investments will lead to profits, regardless of what tax rates apply.

In an attempt to push his small business claim even further, Romney cited a study by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) claiming that Obama’s plan will force small business to cut 700,000 jobs. When the NFIB report came out during the summer, the White House did a fine job of pointing out the many, many outrageous distortions in the report. Just to take one, the NFIB report makes assumptions about the relationship between taxes and investment that are far out of line with those of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and even the Treasury Department during the Bush administration.

Oil and Gas Tax Breaks

President Obama stated that the oil industry receives “$4 billion a year in corporate welfare” and added that he didn’t think anyone believes that a corporation like ExxonMobil really needs extra money coming from the government. Romney hit back saying that the tax break for oil companies is only $2.8 billion a year and that Obama had enacted $90 billion worth of tax breaks in one year for green energy, which he said dwarfed the oil tax breaks 50 times over.

On the oil company tax break claims, Obama’s figure is much closer to the truth. The President’s 2013 budget has a package of provisions that would eliminate or reduce special tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry and the Treasury estimates this would raise $39 billion over a decade. (See page 80 of this budget document.) A CTJ report explains the arguments for these provisions. Ironically, the oil industry itself puts this number much higher, claiming that the Obama administration’s proposal would eliminate about $8.5 billion in tax breaks it receives annually.

In addition, FactCheck.org points out that Romney’s claims on Obama’s clean energy tax breaks were largely bogus. Just to list some of the problems with Romney’s $90 billion claim, FactCheck.org notes that these breaks were spent over two years not one, that the figure includes loan guarantees not just actual spending, and that many of these “breaks” were spent on infrastructure projects.

During the first presidential debate of this election season, President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney’s discussion focused primarily on what is arguably the most important issue of this election: tax policy. Over half of the debate was spent on the intricacies of tax policy, from the treatment of small businesses to the precise revenue cost of trillions of dollars in proposed tax cuts.  Here we offer some criticism and context.

Size of the Candidates’ Tax Cut Plans

Early in the debate Obama explained that Romney’s “central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut – on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.” Romney denied this, saying “I don’t have a $5 trillion cut. I don’t have a tax cut of the scale that you’re talking about.” Romney added that his plan would not “reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people” and that it would “provide tax relief to people in the middle class.”

The truth is that Romney isn’t proposing a $5 trillion tax cut, he’s proposing to cut taxes by over $10 trillion over ten years. Romney proposes new tax cuts costing around $500 billion a year (according to the Tax Policy Center) on top of making permanent all the Bush tax cuts, which by themselves would cost $5.3 trillion over a decade.

Romney is proposing to make up some of the $5 trillion in additional tax cuts by closing loopholes, eliminating deductions and other tax expenditures, but he has kept his plan secret so far and has refused to name even a single tax expenditure he would eliminate or loophole he’d close.

An analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice found that even if millionaires were forced to give up all the tax expenditures that Romney has put on the table, his tax plan would still give a tax break of at least $250,000 on average for individuals making over $1 million. That is, he simply cannot back up his assertion that he is “not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high- income people.” And if he really is going to make up the revenues we’ll lose to his rate cuts, taxes would have to go up for other taxpayers.

Throughout the debate, Romney referred to several studies showing that his plan is mathematically possible (a low standard to meet to be sure), but the reality is that the studies he’s referring to aren’t all actual studies, nor do they fully support his plan.

It’s important to note that while Romney’s tax plan is the height of fiscal irresponsibility, Obama himself is proposing to extend most of the Bush tax cuts, at a cost of $4.2 trillion over the next ten years. The President assured the audience that he wants to “continue the tax rates - the tax cuts that we put into place for small businesses and families.  But,” he continued, “for incomes over $250,000 a year that we should go back to the rates that we had when Bill Clinton was president,” that is, the pre-Bush tax cuts rate.

CTJ has analyzed Obama’s plan and found that extending 78 percent of the Bush tax cuts will lose far too much revenue in the long run. The President’s plan would extend the tax cuts for the first $250,000 a married couple makes. We also found that married couples making between $250,000 and $300,000 would still continue to enjoy, on average, 98 percent of the Bush tax cuts. Fewer than two percent of taxpayers would lose any part of the Bush tax cuts under Obama’s plan, so it’s hardly a bold proposal for reducing the deficit and restoring urgently needed revenues.

In other words, neither presidential candidate showed on Wednesday night that they have fully come to terms with the fact that the United States cannot afford continuing to hand out trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

Long Term Deficit Reduction Plans

At a Republican presidential debate over a year ago, Romney joined with all the other candidates in saying that they would reject any deal that raised tax revenues, even one that would include $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in additional tax revenue – ten times more in crippling spending cuts than tax increases. When pushed by the moderator during Wednesday’s presidential debate, Romney stood firm, saying that he had “absolutely” ruled out the possibility of raising additional revenue to reduce the deficit.

The Simpson-Bowles Commission plan to balance the budget, which Romney praised last night, however, requires a ratio of $1 in spending cuts to $1 in revenue increases (compared to the budget baseline that Obama and many members of Congress use). Ironically, by seemingly embracing Simpson-Bowles, Romney put himself to the left of Obama, whose own long term deficit reduction plan actually cuts fewer taxes and less spending than Simpson-Bowles. As Obama explained in the debate: “the way we do it is $2.50 for every cut, we ask for a dollar of additional revenue.”  (And he repeatedly points out, of course, that his health care legislation will slow the deficit’s growth by reducing Medicare costs.)

Neither candidate is acknowledging the elephant in the room. In the long-run, what they really have to do to fix the budget deficit is just to stop extending most or all of the Bush tax cuts, or find a way to pay for those parts they do extend.

To make watching the debates just a little more fun, we created a Bingo card with all the tax and budget related terms we expect the two candidates to trot out time and again over the coming debates. (If you want to make the debates even more fun you could have a drink everytime they use one of these words as well, but you didn't hear this from us.)

Former Virginia Governor and current Senate candidate Tim Kaine found himself in hot water after a Senatorial debate last week in which he expressed a willingness to consider “a proposal that would have some minimum tax level for everyone.” Perhaps even worse, Kaine has also proposed a so-called “Middle-Ground” approach to the Bush tax cuts, which he says in his TV ad is fiscally responsible. His middle ground position – putting him between a tax-averse Democratic president and a tax-loathing Republican rival – would extend the Bush tax cuts for the first $500,000 that a taxpayer makes in a year.

His fiscally irresponsible ideas about the expiring Bush tax cuts merit their own outrage. Kaine’s proposal to raise the income threshold above which the Bush tax cuts expire to $500,000 would save 22 percent less revenue than Obama’s $250,000 threshold, and 73 percent of the lost revenue would be paying for tax cuts for people making over $500,000.  A full 30 percent of the cost of Kaine’s extra tax cuts would go to people making over $1 million!

It’s not surprising that his statements regarding a minimum tax have caused an uproar considering that such proposals are usually the province of radical conservatives like Minnesota Republican Michelle Bachman, rather than that of moderate Democrats. Ironically, Kaine himself made a strong case against such a proposal in the debate when he noted that “everyone pays taxes,” a point Citizens for Tax Justice repeatedly makes.

What’s so disturbing about Kaine’s Bush tax cut proposal, as opposed to his openness to a minimum tax (which he’s already walked back), is that it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Last May, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed to raise the income threshold over which the Bush tax cuts should expire even higher, from $250,000 to $1 million. Kaine and like-minded Democrats need to reconsider their position because allowing even more of the Bush tax cuts to stay in place makes about zero fiscal sense.

Front Page Photo of Tim Kaine via Third Way Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A hearing on offshore profit shifting last week exposed aggressive tax planning strategies employed by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (HP) and illustrated the critical need for more disclosure.

On September 20, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing on “Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code.” Witnesses from academia, the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. multinational corporations, international tax and accounting firms and the nonprofit Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) answered questions from the Senators about how tax and accounting rules allow U.S. multinationals to shift profits offshore using dubious transactions and complicated corporate structures.

The committee looked at two case studies investigated by the committee staff. In the Microsoft case, the committee investigation found that 55 percent of the company’s profits were “booked” (claimed for accounting purposes) in three offshore tax haven subsidiaries whose employees account for only two percent of its global workforce. Microsoft did that by selling intellectual property rights in products developed in the U.S. (and subsidized by the research tax credit) to offshore tax haven subsidiaries, then creating transactions to shift related profits there.

Hewlett-Packard used a loophole in the regulations to use offshore cash to pay for its U.S. operations without paying any U.S. tax on the repatriated income.  Rather than having offshore subsidiaries pay taxable dividends to the U.S. parent company, HP had two subsidiaries alternately loan funds to the parent in back-to-back-to-back-to-back 45-day loans. In the first three quarters of 2010, there was never a day that HP did not have an outstanding loan of $6 to $9 billion from one of its foreign subsidiaries.

In the tax footnote to their public financial statements, companies disclose the amount of their foreign subsidiaries’ earnings which are “indefinitely reinvested.” They do not record U.S. tax expense on these profits, ostensibly because they don’t plan to bring them back to the U.S. anytime soon. But they must disclose the total amount of their unrepatriated profits and estimate the U.S. tax that would be due if the earnings were repatriated.

The FASB representative, in a conversation with CTJ Senior Counsel Rebecca Wilkins after the hearing, noted that the accounting standards require disclosure. If companies do have a reasonable estimate and are not disclosing the amounts, that would be an “audit failure” by the accounting firm auditing the financial statements and subject to possible disciplinary action by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (established by Congress in 2002).

Most companies have not disclosed the potential U.S. taxes they would owe, but they must know it’s enough that they don’t want to repatriate the earnings and pay it. Chances are, they know those amounts down to the dollar.

It's outrageous that many of the companies who are lobbying hardest for a repatriation holiday won’t tell Congress whether these foreign earnings are sitting in a tax haven right now or how much U.S. tax they would owe on them. Lawmakers should demand to know.

A new survey of 250 economists in the business community by the National Association for Business Economics released on Monday revealed their strong support for increasing fiscal stimulus in the short term and taking a balanced approach to deficit reduction (including revenue increases as well as spending cuts) over the long term. This agreement among business economists stands in direct contrast to many conservative lawmakers in Washington, who increasingly favor spending cuts in the short term and actually decreasing taxes over the long term.

Of the economists surveyed, 67 percent favored maintaining or even increasing the current level of fiscal stimulus in 2013. Moving in the opposite direction, Congress actually enacted $984 billion in spending cuts (known as sequestration) last year, which go into effect starting in 2013; a full three quarters of the economists polled outright oppose allowing those sequestration cuts to take effect.

Although a majority of the business economists did favor extending tax cuts in 2013 to help stimulate the economy (although there was no majority for making all the tax cuts permanent), the reason more of them favor preserving government spending is likely explained by the fact that government spending typically has a much greater positive impact on economic growth than tax cuts.

Turning to the long haul, a full 90 percent of those surveyed believe that Congress should take a balanced approach to deficit reduction, meaning a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And while there is near universal consensus among these economists for tax increases, neither the Democratic nor Republican party platforms support increasing tax revenue as part of a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Both parties instead call for reducing revenue by trillions of dollars (compared to what our tax system would collect if the tax cuts were all allowed to simply expire).

While the business community is often portrayed as being hindered by budget deficits and higher taxes, this survey reveals that they actually favor higher budget deficits in the short term and higher taxes over the long term. It’s time Congress begins listening to the actual business community rather than the anti-tax activists who pretend to speak for them.

Mitt Romney’s 2011 Returns Reveal a Tax Code Stacked in Favor of the Very Rich Because of Loopholes and Special Rates Not Available to Ordinary Taxpayers

Washington, DC – Since Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) first calculated that GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney likely paid a 2010 federal income tax rate of 14 percent in October of 2011, CTJ’s analysts have been helping to explain the features of our tax code that allow high wealth individuals like Romney to pay such a low federal income tax rate. The explanation is that loopholes in the tax code benefit the most affluent. 

After reviewing Mitt Romney’s 2011 return (an estimate of which he released in January), and the 20-year summary of the candidate’s taxes issued by his lawyer, CTJ’s Senior Counsel for Federal Tax Policy, Rebecca Wilkins, issued the following statement:

“It’s an indictment of the federal tax code that a man of Mitt Romney’s wealth could pay a federal tax rate as low as 10 percent. While he chose to forgo deductions for charitable contributions in order to keep his “commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13 percent,” bringing his rate up to 14 percent for 2011, it is still outrageous that the code allows such a low rate.

“He also takes advantage of a special low rate on investment income. The preferential rate on capital gains and dividends saved Mitt Romney a whopping $1.2 million in taxes in 2011, cutting his tax bill almost in half.  He would have paid $3.1 million in taxes without that special treatment. And much of his low-rate income is really compensation from Bain Capital that should have been taxed like regular wages or salary, but is disguised as capital gains using the “carried interest” loophole.

“Romney also paid $675,000 under the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). If his own tax plan, which eliminates the AMT, had been in place in 2011, he would have saved himself an additional $675,000, or one third of his entire federal tax bill, and reduced his effective rate to 9 percent.

“Also notice that Mitt Romney’s tax return for 2011 is almost twice as long as it was in 2010. It is 379 pages long, and 250 pages are foreign entity disclosure forms. Put simply, that’s 250 pages about his offshore investments.

“Further, the summary provided by his lawyer is playing games by averaging Romney’s 20-year tax rate. Including the years 1992-97 skewed his rate upwards because during those years, the capital gains rate was 28 percent instead of the 15 percent it is now. If they’d averaged only the last 15 years, his rate would have been much lower.

“And one final point is that Romney continued to work and make lots of money even when his capital gains tax rate was almost double the current rate, the rate he wants to retain.  Yet he says that the low capital gains rate is essential to incentivizing rich people to do what they do.  How does he explain that?”

***

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation (www.ctj.org).

 A new study by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) using data from the past 65 years found that there is no correlation (PDF) between top tax rates and economic growth. But it doesn’t stop there. The study also found that there is a correlation between the reduction in top tax rates and the increasing concentration of wealth toward the top of the income distribution. The report, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, is also clear that this is not only about tax rates on regular income, and points out (PDF) that “changes in capital gains and dividends were the largest contributor to the increase in income inequality since the mid-1990’s.”

This has to be just about the last nail in the tax-cutting, supply-side coffin. CRS is a bunch of smart people at the Library of Congress whose mission is “providing comprehensive and reliable legislative research and analysis that are timely, objective, authoritative, and confidential, thereby contributing to an informed national legislature.”  And while the study has earned volumes of media coverage, it’s worth noting that even the Wall Street Journal report didn’t quibble with the study’s finding that “tax cuts for the rich don’t seem to be associated with economic growth…. [but] can be linked to a different outcome: income inequality.”

The CRS findings fall in line with the increasing consensus showing that supply-side tax cuts touted by people like Arthur Laffer have been an enormous failure over the past several decades. As Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre has pointed out, even George W. Bush’s own Treasury Department conceded in 2006 that the Bush tax cuts (which were mostly targeted to the wealthiest Americans) would not have a significant effect on economic growth over the long term. And every few weeks in his New York Times blog post, Ronald Reagan’s former advisor, Bruce Bartlett, explains that tax cuts really can not and do not make an economy healthy.

For numbers crunchers, here are some details about the study. To explore the connection between top tax rates and economic growth, the CRS performed two regression analyses comparing the top income and capital gains tax rates to the private savings rate, productivity growth rate, and real per capita GDP from 1945 to 2010. The results of the analysis reveal that there is simply no statistically significant relationship between tax rates and savings, productivity, or real per capita GDP.

To examine the effect of top tax rates on income inequality, the CRS used a regression analysis comparing the top income and capital gains tax rates to the share of income earned by the top 0.1% and 0.01%. The analysis found that there is a statistically significant negative correlation between the share of income received by the top 0.1% and 0.01% of income earners and the level of the marginal tax rates. In other words, lowering top marginal tax rates has the effect of further increasing the disproportionate amount of income earned by the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Citizens for Tax Justice and other economic think tanks have been demonstrating the flaws in supply-side tax cuts for decades, and the public is increasingly catching on about taxes in particular and economic inequality more generally. With these two issues high on the election year agenda, maybe 2012 will be the year supply-siders, voodoo economists, wishful thinkers and other magical thinkers lose their credibility, once and for all.

***

UPDATE, November 1, 2012: According to a New York Times story, "[t]he Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economy theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper’s findings and wording." The study referred to is the one CTJ blogged here when it was first published in September 2012.

***

UPDATE, December 13, 2013: The report has now been reissued with little changes and the same basic conclusions are contained in the original report.

Bradley Birkenfeld, a former banker at the Swiss banking giant UBS, received a record-setting reward of $104 million from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for blowing the whistle on the bank’s systematic efforts to woo wealthy Americans investors and then help them evade taxes. Birkenfeld’s revelations resulted in UBS paying a $780 million fine to the US government, and the recovery of more than $5 billion from American taxpayers took part in the IRS’s amnesty program to avoid criminal charges for their own offshore tax evasion.

Birkenfeld participated in the UBS scheme (he served jail time and is now under house arrest). His insider disclosures led the IRS to other UBS bankers who had persuaded wealthy Americans to place $20 billion of assets in UBS in order to facilitate tax evasion that -- obviously -- boosted those clients’ returns. The IRS has charged two dozen offshore bankers and 50 American taxpayers with crimes, and at least 11 banks are still under criminal investigation.

The record payout to Birkenfeld is part of the IRS Whistleblower program that provides a substantial financial incentive, up to 30 percent of the taxes recovered, to encourage tipsters to come forward with information about tax evasion. This program is a smart piece of the IRS’s larger strategy to combat the estimated $40 to $70 billion in individual offshore tax evasion each year.

While the effort to combat offshore tax evasion has revved up over the past couple years, the IRS still lacks the tools it needs to fully confront evasion. To help fix this, Senator Carl Levin has proposed the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which, among other things, would allow the Treasury to put more pressure on financial institutions that don’t cooperate with US tax enforcement. In addition, the Senate still needs to override Senator Rand Paul’s block and ratify the US-Swiss tax treaty so that the IRS can begin collecting critical information from Swiss banks about US tax evaders.

Even with the many hurdles the IRS faces, Stephen Kohn, the Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, said that it had been a good day in the fight against tax evasion because the IRS sent “104 million messages to banks around the world – stop enabling tax cheats or you will get caught.”

It turns out that Mitt Romney’s energy policy adviser, Harold Hamm, is the CEO of an oil company called Continental Resources, and we all know that energy companies get some of the most generous breaks in the U.S. corporate income tax code. When we learned Hamm had submitted testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee claiming that his company pays a 38% effective tax rate, we had to fact check it.  We reviewed data from the company’s own financial reports and ran the numbers, and it turns out Continental Resources has paid a mere 2.2% federal corporate income tax rate on its $1,872 million in profits over the last five years.  Read our one-pager here.

With just eight weeks to go until Election Day, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney continues to channel former First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. Romney first said "no" to releasing more of his federal income tax returns and now he's saying "no" to releasing details of his plans to change the tax code for the rest of us. But in the same way adults respond to a terrible-twos child with a serious case of the “No’s”, the adults are starting to demand better answers.

Only yesterday, editorials from both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times took Romney to task over his and running mate Paul Ryan's failure to explain to the American taxpayer just what they would do tax policy-wise. And the Washington Post was clear in its editorial that Americans deserve to know whether Romney plans to follow in the footsteps of former President George W. Bush, who “enacted tax cuts that plunged the nation into debt.”

Politico, meanwhile, reported that Republicans and movement conservatives (from George Pataki to the Wall Street Journal) are warning that the GOP ticket better come clean on its policy plans or risk losing the election. (Evidently believing that once voters hear about their plans to coddle the rich and soak everyone else they will sweep them to electoral victory.)

Two weeks ago, CTJ’s Bob McIntyre also called for Romney to stop stalling and level with the public about his secret tax plan. We, too, have written at length on the lack of math (serious or otherwise) coming from the top of the Republican ticket.

Romney's refusal to release any more of his federal income tax returns tells us he doesn't want people to know how he made his money. Is his refusal to reveal the details of how, if elected, he'd change the tax code an indication he doesn't want you to know what might happen to your money?  

In its 2012 Platform, the Democratic Party broadly calls for a tax system that asks “the wealthiest and corporations to pay their fair share,” while also taking “decisive steps to restore fiscal responsibility.” The actual policy proposals called for in the platform, however, are wholly inadequate to achieve either tax fairness or fiscal sustainability.

The Bush Tax Cuts

The most important platform plank on the individual side of the tax system is the call to allow the “Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire,” which reflects President Obama’s proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for income over $250,000. Under the president’s proposal, 98.1% of Americans would continue receiving the entirety of their Bush tax cuts. It’s important to note that while the wealthiest Americans would lose part of their tax cuts under President Obama’s proposal, they would still receive generous tax breaks because any income up to $250,000 (or $200,000 for singles) would continue to be taxed at the low, Bush tax cut rates. As a result, the wealthiest 1%, for example, would get an average tax break of $20,130 in 2013.

It is also important to note that even this partial extension of the Bush tax cuts the president proposes would increase the deficit by an astounding $4.2 trillion over the next decade. To be sure, President Obama’s plan is much more fiscally responsible than a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, which would increase the deficit by $5.4 trillion. But fiscal responsibility will eventually require something bolder than simply extending most of the tax cuts that are responsible for most of the deficit.

Corporate Tax Reform

Turning to corporate taxes, the Democratic platform follows the misguided “Framework for Corporate Tax Reform,” introduced by President Obama earlier this year, which proposes to use the closure of corporate tax loopholes to pay for lower corporate tax rates. It also proposes an expansion of the research and manufacturing tax credits. What this framework gets right is a call to end the egregious loopholes and tax breaks that allow major corporations to pay an average effective tax rate of half the statutory rate, with many corporations paying nothing at all.

The problem is that instead of using the revenue raised by eliminating tax loopholes and breaks to fund desperately needed government investments and reduce the deficit, the Democratic platform, like the president’s framework, squanders the revenue on lower corporate tax rates and/or additional wasteful tax breaks. In other words, this kind of “revenue-neutral” corporate tax reform is not what the US needs; instead, we need revenue-positive reform.

Stuck in the Anti-Tax Mindset

The Democratic Party 2012 platform reveals a party deeply committed to the anti-tax mindset that historically is associated with the Republican Party. Rather than laying out the cold, hard truth about how the US needs to raise a substantial amount of revenue to meet its commitment to future generations, the Democratic platform seems an attempt to one–up Republicans on the virtues of tax cutting by touting the wide variety of cuts Democrats already enacted, and the massive amount they plan to extend. Given the enormous need for revenue to fund public investments and eventually reduce the deficit, a record of tax-cutting should be a source of embarrassment rather than pride or celebration.

More and more people are asking if Bain Capital’s tax avoidance strategies are more than merely aggressive. On August 23, Gawker.com released a staggering 950 pages of documents related to Bain, the private equity firm that Mitt Romney founded, that confirm a lot of what we had previously surmised, including the fact that the Bain private equity funds set up “blocker” corporations to help tax-exempt investors avoid the unrelated business income tax and help foreign investors avoid tax in the U.S. and in their home countries.

CTJ senior counsel Rebecca Wilkins summarized it for Huffington Post: “The Bain documents posted yesterday show that Bain Capital will go to great lengths to help its partners and its investors avoid tax. Beyond simply putting their funds offshore, the Bain private equity funds are using aggressive tax-planning techniques such as blocker corporations, equity swaps, alternative investment vehicles, and management fee conversions.”

The management fee conversions, detailed in several of the fund documents, do what they sound like they do: they convert some of the private equity firms’ annual management fees from clients, which would be taxed as ordinary income, into increased shares of partnership profits known as “carried interest”.  Carried interest is how these firms have structured their performance-based compensation from managing their clients’ investments, and carried interest is taxed at the special low rate at which capital gains are taxed. The management fee conversion is an effort to get yet another form of client compensation taxed at the capital gains rate, which is less than half the rate at which it would be taxed if it were ordinary income. These conversions save private equity firms’ partners millions of dollars in income taxes (the Bain partners alone have saved an estimated $220 million).

Colorado Law Professor Vic Fleischer, an expert on the taxation of private equity, quickly branded the management fee conversions as improper. “Unlike carried interest, which is unseemly but perfectly legal, Bain’s management fee conversions are not legal.”

It looks as though the New York Attorney General agrees. In July, weeks before the Gawker document dump, AG Eric Schneiderman served subpoenas on more than a dozen private equity firms, including Bain Capital.  The AG’s office is seeking documents related to whether the firms improperly converted management fees into additional carried interest, and running the investigation through its Taxpayer Protection Bureau. 

As controversial as private equity firm tax practices have become (thanks to Mitt Romney’s candidacy), we are likely to be hearing more about this investigation soon. Stay tuned.

The GOP’s core philosophy about tax policy is perfectly distilled in its 2012 platform where it states simply that “[l]owering taxes promotes substantial economic growth.” What this one-sided analysis misses is that lower taxes do not promote economic growth, because they inevitably require (PDF) the government to either cut spending or to increase the deficit.

(Our GOP platform review Part II, Tax Ideas on the Fringe, is here.)

Supports More Individual Tax Cuts

The fact that the GOP platform does not make the connection between tax cuts and deficits is starkly demonstrated by the platform’s warning that the US faces an “unprecedented legacy of enormous and unsustainable debt,” while at the same time calling for a complete extension of the Bush tax cuts, at a cost of $5.4 trillion (PDF). While some GOP leaders like to say that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they pay for themselves, there is no evidence to support that claim, and even economists from the Bush Administration and a former Reagan advisor have conceded that over the long run, the Bush tax cuts have no real discernable affect on economic growth.

Supports More Corporate Tax Cuts

Another misguided tax proposal in the GOP platform is the call for a lower corporate tax rate. For one, the platform rests on the mistaken assumption  that “American businesses now face the world’s highest corporate tax rate.” While it may be true that the US has the highest statutory rate on paper, the actual amount of taxes paid by US corporations is nowhere near the statutory rate because of the large swath of corporate tax breaks and loopholes that allow many enormously profitable companies, like General Electric and Verizon, to pay nothing at all in taxes.

Comparatively, the amount of corporate taxes paid as a percentage of GDP in the US is the second lowest in the developed world. In fact, a recent CTJ analysis found that two-thirds of the largest US multinational corporations with significant foreign profits paid a lower corporate tax rate on their US profits than the rate they paid to foreign governments on their foreign profits.

Rather than dealing with the breaks and loopholes that plague our corporate tax system, the GOP platform advocates expanding them, most notably by moving the US to a territorial tax system under which corporations would have a greater incentive to move profits and jobs offshore (a problem that can be solved by ending deferral).

The new Republican platform identifies high rates as the core problem with our current tax system, but the real problem is decades of cuts and proliferating breaks and loopholes are making it impossible over the long term for the government to provide critical services without dangerously increasing the national debt.

The GOP’s 2012 platform contains many of the policies that you would expect from the party, such as calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts and reducing corporate tax rates. Here we focus, however, on three planks in the platform that fall far outside the mainstream of tax policy.

(Our GOP platform review Part I, Same Old Supply Side Stuff, is here.)

1. Support for a Radical Constitutional Amendment to Restrict Taxes and Budgets

Following efforts by the House GOP last year to pass the most extreme balanced-budget amendment ever, the GOP platform calls for the passage of a constitutional amendment that would require that the federal government have a balanced budget, cap federal spending at its historical average share of GDP (around 18 percent), and require a super-majority for any tax increase (with an exception for war or national emergency). This kind of amendment poses all kinds of problems, not the least of which is that it would immediately cause unemployment to double (according to nonpartisan, private sector economists) and drive the economy into a deep recession.  Balanced budget amendments in all their forms (including state level versions) are disastrous, because they essentially tie the hands of legislators and cripple government functions.

2. Nod to National Consumption Tax

Warning that we must “guard against hypertaxation of the American people,” the GOP platform says that the creation of a national sales tax or value-added tax (VAT) can only happen in conjunction with the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which allowed for the federal income tax.

On the one hand, this plank is odd because a national sales tax or VAT is not a political possibility; even the hint of it prompted the US Senate to pass a resolution explicitly rejecting a VAT by an 85 to 13 vote just a couple of years ago.  Anyway, the fear that a national consumption tax would lead to some sort of “hypertaxation” is unfounded. Its implementation in Canada (PDF) is a case study showing how overall taxes can actually decrease following the creation of a national consumption tax.

On the other hand, the existence of this plank in the GOP platform suggests that the Republican party’s establishment might actually be considering a radically regressive policy like the so-called “Fair Tax” (which is just a national sales tax) and elimination of the federal income tax (the primary source of fairness in the tax code and sustainable, sensible revenue source).

3. Opposition to a United Nations Global Tax

Perhaps the most inexplicable plank in the entire GOP platform is opposition to “any form of UN Global Tax.” While there are conspiracy theories, such as how the UN may very well invade in Texas in order to enforce its radical tax agenda during Obama’s second term, the reality is that no one takes the possibility of a UN global tax seriously. To be clear, there is no indication of support among US lawmakers to implement such a UN tax, nor does the UN have the power to impose one.

by Robert S. McIntyre, CTJ Director

Almost a year ago, long before Mitt Romney became the Republican presidential nominee, CTJ was the first to figure out just how little Romney pays in federal income taxes. Based on Romney’s limited but useful financial disclosures at the time, we calculated that his 2010 effective federal tax rate was a ridiculously low 14 percent (on his reported income) — less than half of what Warren Buffett’s famous secretary pays.

Michael Scherer of Time Magazine, who’d asked us to do the analysis, posted our results on Time’s website on Oct. 3, 2011. The story got widespread attention, and led to growing demands that Romney release his actual federal income tax returns. After months of stonewalling, Romney finally released his 2010 return, which confirmed our prediction that he’d paid only 14 percent in federal income taxes.

Since then, Romney has adamantly refused to release any of his earlier tax returns, causing speculation that he has something even more damaging to hide (and keeping CTJ busy fielding media questions about what such things might be).

Looking at Romney’s past tax returns could provide some valuable information, not just about Romney himself but also about the egregious loopholes that allow him to pay so little.

But Romney is hiding a much more important tax secret: the truth about how the tax plan he’s campaigning on would affect the rest of us.

So far, all Romney has told us about his individual income tax plan is the following: First, he would extend all of the Bush tax cuts and permanently repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. Second, he would make interest, dividends and capital gains tax-exempt for people with other income up to certain levels ($200,000 for couples). Third, he would reduce all federal personal income tax rates by a fifth (so, for example, the top income tax rate would fall to 28 percent). Fourth, well, the fourth item is the big secret.

Romney says that he would partially pay for the $8 trillion ten-year cost of the income tax cuts he proposes  by getting rid of many personal tax breaks. But he refuses to specify even a single one of them! To be sure, at one point, he suggested he might curb the mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes, but he quickly backed off even that tiny reform.

How can voters calculate even roughly how they would be affected by Romney’s tax plan without knowing the crucial details of which tax breaks he wants to eliminate? Will he crack down on tax breaks for wealthy investors like himself? Well, no, he’s ruled that out. Will he eliminate deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes? Tax credits for middle- and low-income families with children? The tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance? Tax deductions for extraordinary medical expenses? Who knows?

It’s all well and good that analysts with high-powered tax models (like ITEP’s) can calculate that even if Romney eliminated all non-investment-related personal tax breaks, his gargantuan tax plan can’t possibly break even — and thus will mean huge increases in budget deficits. But American voters also deserve to know whether Romney plans to raise taxes on them, and by how much.

Barring a speech tonight that answers these questions, that’s the crucial tax secret that the public and the media should be clamoring for Romney to reveal.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been doing a lot of media interviews lately, and when the editors at Politico wrote up their sit-down with the GOP nominee, they characterized Romney’s answers to their questions as “the clearest window yet into how the lessons he gained in the corporate world would be applied to the presidency.

So what did he say? Romney told Politico “I learned leadership by watching people,” and named J.W. “Bill” Marriott, a fellow Mormon and the CEO of the hotel chain of the same name, as one of the people from whom he’s learned a lot about leadership. He put Marriott right up there with his mentor, Bill Bain.

While we can’t speak to Bill Marriott’s management style, we can tell you that during his 40-year tenure as CEO of Marriott International, the company engaged in aggressive tax avoiding – so aggressive that it later got them into trouble with the IRS.

The company used a tax shelter known as “Son of BOSS,” generating capital losses that a federal court deemed “fictitious,” “artificial” and a “scheme.” The government criminally prosecuted the promoters of this particular tax shelter and people are now serving federal prison sentences for it. In fact Romney himself, as a member of Marriott’s audit board, most likely signed off on this tax evasion strategy. The company has used other aggressive tax planning vehicles, too, even claiming a questionable tax credit for synthetic fuels.

Marriott also shows an ever-increasing ability to shift and shelter its profits offshore. While 3,122 of its 3,718 hotel properties are in the United States, the company pays more income tax in foreign jurisdictions than in the US, even though the majority of its profits must surely be generated here.

Marriott has over a hundred subsidiaries in known tax haven countries. For example, while it has only one hotel in the Cayman Islands, Marriott has 15 subsidiary companies there.  And in Luxembourg, where it has nine subsidiaries but zero hotels, Marriott uses one of its subsidiaries to collect royalties on its various brand names which the US cannot tax.

Does Romney admire and endorse these kinds of shenanigans? Hard to say for sure. But given his widely recognized use of some pretty aggressive (though legal, far as we know) strategies to avoid paying his personal taxes, we now have a glimpse into the values that inform his views on corporate tax policy.  We are beginning to sense a pattern in this presidential candidate, and it looks a little like disdain for our nation’s tax laws.

Mitt Romney appears to have a lot at stake in the upcoming election when it comes to his own federal taxes.

If Obama wins and gets his tax plan adopted, then Romney will pay an effective federal tax rate of 34.3 percent.

If Romney wins and he successfully promotes the tax plan that his running mate, Paul Ryan, proposed in 2010 (the only Romney-Ryan tax plan spelled out in any detail), then Romney will pay only 0.4 percent.

The dollar difference, per year: $7.7 million!

In contrast, Obama would actually raise his own tax rate to 28.4 percent and Romney would lower it 18.1 percent, saving Obama some $67,000.

Note: All these figures are based on the income and deductions reported on Romney’s 2010 federal tax return, the only return he has yet been willing to release.

When news broke last week that a Senator on the GOP vice presidential short list had introduced one of the dumbest, most opportunistic and transparently political pieces of tax legislation of all time, we wrote:

How, at a time when Congress faces vital decisions over the basic structure of our tax system, did the Senator identify the tax treatment of Olympic bonuses as a pressing issue? It turns out that Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) put out a press release saying that medal winners will face a tax bill of almost $9,000 if they win a gold medal.  Rubio’s spokesperson said that’s what caught Rubio’s eye. But the ATR numbers are complete bunk….

And then, in a facepalm moment to eclipse all others (for us, anyway), President Obama said this week that he would sign Senator Rubio’s utterly stupid bill exempting Olympic winnings from taxes if it reached his desk. The President’s spokesman said we should “ensure that we are doing everything we can to honor and support our Olympic athletes who have volunteered to represent our nation at the Olympic Games.”

The young Senator’s Olympic Tax Elimination Act, however, may not have such an easy journey to the President’s desk.  GOP Senator Tom Coburn’s office said, “If tax code gymnastics was an Olympic sport this idea might get a medal.  Like the carve outs for NASCAR, rum makers and electric motorcycles, tax earmarks are a tax increase for everyone who doesn't receive the benefit.”

In a more elaborate argument against this new bill, wonk blogger Matthew Yglesias makes the important point that “taxes aren’t supposed to be a cosmic judgment on the underlying worthiness of people’s activities.” They are supposed to raise revenues, but as long as Congress keeps using the tax system to dole out favors, hope for the kind reform we need are slim. “[P]oliticians have to be willing to actually articulate the benefits of a broad tax base—less evasion, less distortion of economic resources, the possibility of lower rates—and Democrats in particular need to be willing to make the case that public services are worth paying for.”

Best of all, here a CPA who happens to have prepared some Olympians’ returns explains the obvious. He identifies a massive loophole and notes that the bill, “as currently written, would exclude all of these bonuses from taxation.” By these bonuses, he means massive amounts of money from corporate endorsements (e.g. their picture on a box of Wheaties) Olympic medalists receive. And the bigger your endorsement, the bigger the tax break.

We’re’ rooting for common sense.

For someone who’s not interested in a high profile job like Vice President, Florida Senator Marco Rubio sure knows where the limelight shines. Earlier this week he introduced legislation that would create a new federal income tax break for the cash bonuses received by U.S. Olympic medalists. (It turns out that the United States Olympic Committee gives gold medal winners $25,000 cash bonuses, with smaller awards for silver or bronze.) With no apparent irony, Rubio issued a press release noting that the “tax code is a complicated and burdensome mess,” and then proposed a new tax break that would make it even more so.

How, at a time when Congress faces vital decisions over the basic structure of our tax system, did the Senator identify the tax treatment of Olympic bonuses as a pressing issue? It turns out that Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) put out a press release saying that medal winners will face a tax bill of almost $9,000 if they win a gold medal.  Rubio’s spokesperson said that’s what caught Rubio’s eye.

But the ATR numbers are complete bunk. Their calculations assume that a medal winner will pay tax at the 35 percent top rate, but less than one percent of Americans pay anything, even a dollar of income, at the 35 percent rate. (Politifact agrees, and rates ATR’s claim “mostly false.”) We can only think of a dozen or so gold medal winners who might, in fact, pay 35 percent on their gold medals: they are members of the US basketball team, and they are all millionaires. 

What Senator Rubio and his counterparts in the House are proposing is to add yet another exemption to our tax code, which is, of course, the main reason it’s so complicated – Congress insists on flagging more and more special types of income for special tax breaks.

If Rubio’s bill is really an honest attempt at tax reform rather than an attempt to capitalize on Olympics-related publicity, it’s actually doubly sad: not only did he get duped by misleading numbers from Grover Norquist, he also just doesn’t seem to understand that the “complicated and burdensome tax code” he bemoans will become even more so if his bill passes!

If, on the other hand, Rubio’s bill is the cynical grandstanding that it appears to be, it’s a real shame. As we've said elsewhere, our revenues are dwindling, the rich pay less and less in taxes every year and the tax code is a Rube Goldberg-ian mess. But it seems Senator Rubio is more interested in compounding these problems than solving them.

Photo from Politifact.com

A new study by Ernst and Young is grabbing headlines by purporting to show that President Obama’s plan to end most of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans would cause job losses over the long term. This study is highly suspect however because it makes methodological assumptions that are out of line with other independent studies, which actually show that  the expiration of the Bush tax cuts would lead to increased economic growth over the long term.

As the White House explains, the study assumes an entirely unrealistic drop in the labor supply by medium and high income earners due to higher tax rates. Their expected labor supply response is nearly 10 times higher than the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assumes when it makes similar estimates on labor supply effects. 

In addition, the Ernst and Young study makes the bizarre assumption that all of the additional tax revenue will be used for additional spending, rather than for deficit reduction. While it does not explain any reason for this assumption, the effect of it is to eliminate the possibility that the additional revenue will increase private investment by reducing the deficit’s “crowding out” effect.

When the non-partisan CBO performed a study in January 2012 on the economic effects of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire using its much more robust assumptions, it found that the extension of all of the Bush tax cuts and other expiring measures would reduce Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by as much as 2.1 percent in 2022 and would reduce Gross National Product (GNP) by as much as 3.7 percent in 2022.

Building on this, Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre notes that even President George W. Bush’s own Treasury Department, which was “managed by Bush appointees who profess a deep affection for Bush’s tax-cutting policies,” found that over the long term extending the Bush tax cuts would have “essentially no beneficial effect on the U.S. economy at all.”

Ernst and Young’s reliance on a radical methodology, putting it out-of-line with even the Bush Administration’s Treasury Department, is not be much of a surprise considering that the study was paid for by conservative anti-tax groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. Both these groups have proven in the past that they are willing to distort the facts in order to protect the wallets of the country’s wealthiest corporations and CEOs.

Photo of US Chamber Logo via Truth Out Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on “tax reform and the U.S. manufacturing sector.”  With no apparent irony, the Committee invited Susan Ford, a senior official from champion corporate tax-avoider Corning, Inc., to testify on how Congress ought to make the U.S. tax code more friendly for manufacturing.

Ford raised eyebrows with her claim that in 2011, Corning paid a U.S. tax rate of 36 percent and a foreign tax rate of 17 percent.

It’s unclear how Ms. Ford comes up with a 36 percent rate, but clearly one thing she’s doing is counting Corning’s “deferred” U.S. taxes (taxes not yet paid) as well as “current” taxes (U.S. taxes actually paid in 2011). Of course, those “deferred” taxes may eventually be paid. If and when they are paid, they will be included in Corning’s “current” taxes in the year(s) they are paid.

But current taxes are what Corning actually pays each year, and Corning has amassed an impressive record of paying nothing, or less than nothing, in current U.S. taxes. CTJ and ITEP’s November 2011 corporate tax avoidance report found that between 2008 and 2010, Corning didn’t pay a dime in federal corporate income taxes, actually receiving a $4 million refund to add to its $1.9 billion in U.S. profits during this period. And a more recent CTJ report found that in 2011, Corning earned almost $1 billion in U.S. pretax income, and once again didn’t pay a dime in federal income tax. These data paint a dramatically different picture from the “36 percent” claim made by Corning before Congress today.

Ford’s testimony also includes a common but false claim about how U.S. taxes compare to foreign taxes:

“American manufacturers are at a distinct disadvantage to competitors headquartered in other countries. Specifically, foreign manufacturers uniformly face a lower corporate tax rate than U.S. manufacturers…”

In fact, over the 2008-2010 period, Corning paid a higher effective corporate income tax rate to foreign governments than it paid to the US government. (Which wasn’t hard to do, since it paid nothing to the U.S. government.) CTJ’s November 2011 report shows that over the 2008-2010 period, Corning paid  -0.2 percent (negative 0.2 percent) of its US profits in US corporate income taxes, but paid 8.6 percent (positive 8.6 percent) of its foreign profits in foreign corporate income taxes.

During the Congressional hearing, 3M executive Henry W. Gjersdal made a similar, and equally misleading, claim, in his testimony before the Committee, arguing that “[i]n an increasingly global marketplace, 3M’s high effective tax rate is a competitive disadvantage.”

But if 3M has a high worldwide effective tax rate, it’s not because the U.S. corporate income tax is high. In fact, like Corning, 3M paid a higher effective corporate income tax rate to foreign governments than it paid to the U.S. government between 2008 and 2010. Specifically, it paid an effective 23.8 percent rate on its US profits in US corporate income taxes and 27.1 percent on its foreign profits in foreign corporate income taxes, according to CTJ’s report.

Let’s remember that Corning also spent $2.8 million on lobbying during the 2008-10 period they spent enjoying a tax-free ride from the federal government. There are companies across the country paying their fair share in taxes and still making enough to grow their business and please their shareholders. Those are the kinds of companies Congress should be hearing from.

The National Governors Association is meeting this week and our clickable yearbook of 22 governors is assigning honors to some and detention to others for the tax policies they pushed in 2011 and 2012.

(Single Infographic Version)

	Jan Brewer (R-AZ)	Jerry Brown (D-CA)	Sam Brownback (R-KS)
	Most Likely to Side with Wealthy Investors	Best at Playing a Bad Political Hand	Most Likely to Bankrupt His State
	Lincoln Chafee (I-RI)	Chris Christie (R-NJ)	Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)
	A+ For Effort at Sales Tax Reform	Fiscal Drama Queen	Best Reversal on Millionaires Tax
	Mark Dayton (D-MN)	Mary Fallin (R-OK)	John Kasich (R-OH)
	Most Willing to Stand Up to Legislature	Biggest Loser at Cutting Income Taxes	Fracking Tax Squanderer
	Paul LePage (R-ME)	John Lynch (D-NH)	Dan Malloy (D-CT)
	Reverse Robin Hood Award	Smartest Veto of the Year	Most Likely to Make Rich to Pay Fair Share
	Martin O’Malley (D-MD)	Butch Otter (R-ID)	Deval Patrick (D-MA)
	Defender of Public Services	Champion of the “1%”	Mr. Popular Gimmickry
	Beverly Perdue (D-NC)	Rick Perry (R-TX)	Pat Quinn (D-IL)
	Most Likely to Gamble with State’s Future	Grover Copy Cat Award	Least Likely to Prioritize Seniors
	Brian Sandoval (R-NV)	Rick Scott (R-FL)	Rick Snyder (R-MI)
	Most Likely to Defy Grover’s Tax Pledge	Corporate Tax Giveaway King	Biggest Tax Hiker on the Poor and Elderly
	Scott Walker (R-WI)
	Biggest Bully

School vouchers are always controversial, but a front-page story in the New York Times describes how at least eight states have embarked on a quiet strategy of back-door vouchers which divert taxpayer money through tax rebates to private donors. While two states allow individuals to exploit this tax break, most are structured as corporate tax breaks.  So they are like conventional vouchers, except minus the accountability, and offering a special tax shelter for corporate profits.

You’d think you can’t make this stuff up, but somebody did.  

Sometimes called “neo-vouchers,” (PDF) the system involves corporate tax credits being doled out to businesses that contribute money to private-school scholarship funds. At their worst, they allow profitable corporations to actually make money from these contributions (they also get a write-off for charitable contributions on top of the dollar-for-dollar tax break match), reducing their income taxes by more than they actually contributed to schools.  And of course, this funnels needed public school funds (and those are taxpayer dollars) to private schools that often aren’t even subject to the same educational standards as a state’s public schools.

This trend is especially troubling now because elementary and secondary school funding already faces a perfect storm: the bursting of the home-value bubble is depressing property tax collections nationwide, and the end of stimulus-related federal aid to states has further constrained education funding. And as the Times documents, these tax credits cum vouchers are often poorly designed and subject to little oversight: some states don’t require the private schools receiving these scholarships to administer the same achievement tests as public schools, while others have no mechanism for directing scholarships to needy families. In fact, there is anecdotal evidence that some students benefitting from the scholarships would have attended these private schools anyway—which means their parents are being paid, by other taxpayers in their state, to do what they were planning to do anyway. 

Why, at a time when adequately funding K-12 education has been so difficult for states, are lawmakers in these states so cheerful about directly siphoning tax revenue away from cash-starved public schools through these “neo-vouchers?” Maybe because they think that tax breaks aren’t the same thing as direct government spending? One source tells the Times, “there are private dollars coming from a private individual and going to a private foundation. It drives the N.E.A. completely off the wall because they can’t say this is government funding.”  Another piece similarly argues that “[v]ouchers and tax-credits vary in important ways. Both programs enable students to attend public or private schools of their parents’ choice, but unlike tax-credit scholarships, vouchers are publicly funded, paid for with government appropriations.”

But these statements are both ludicrous.  When a state government provides tax breaks for corporate contributions to private schools, the effect on state budgets is exactly the same as if the government had spent the money directly. It’s “government funding” either way. The critical difference is that tax breaks typically involve less oversight and public debate than dilrect spending, even as they divert public resources away from families still enrolled in underfunded public schools.

Some advocates of these tax giveaways have argued that this approach actually saves money, because the per-pupil cost of educating children in the private schools receiving the scholarships is lower than the per-pupil cost of public schools. Yet as a helpful new analysis from the National Education Policy Center shows, this claim assumes that the credit allows parents to move their children from public schools to private schools—and there is no evidence that it is having that effect.

And on top of all this, neo-vouchers are an actual money-maker for corporations. Remember, the system offers not only dollar-for-dollar state tax credits for contributions, but the ability of corporations to write off charitable contributions on their federal tax forms.  Companies can actually make a profit from these tax giveaways, collecting more in federal and state tax breaks than they actually spent on the contribution! And Florida’s credit, which was expanded by lawmakers earlier this year, is now the single most expensive (PDF) corporate tax credit allowed by the state, at $72 million a year.

So far, despite growing scrutiny of these perverse tax breaks in Georgia (PDF) and other states, lawmakers in New Jersey and North Carolina (details) appear undeterred and are poised to enact similar plans.

Photo of North Carolina Private School Students via  Harris Walker Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In another example of Representation Without Taxation, on Thursday the House Ways and Means Committee reported out a bill that would repeal the medical device excise tax that was enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act and scheduled to go into effect next year. This week it goes to the floor for a vote which, according to the Associated Press, is largely a political maneuver which allows the House GOP to look like they’re fighting for jobs while conveniently unraveling funding for the Democrats’ health care reform; GOP leader John Boehner concedes the latter himself.

The medical device industry successfully lobbied to cut the rate down on the proposed excise tax, and now they are lobbying to repeal the tax entirely, threatening job losses, reduced innovation and higher costs – the usual corporate response to the suggestion of a tax.

And as usual, most of their claims are unfounded, indeed “not credible,” as a Bloomberg analysis concluded. Bloomberg and others cite one fundamental flaw in the industry’s own analysis: it ignores the increased profits from boosted demand for their product that will be created by the health care reform law.

Another (familiar) ploy the industry is using is hiding behind small businesses, communities and entrepreneurs, but the truth is that about 85 percent of the tax will be paid by very large firms like Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, and Medtronic. Of course, it’s no coincidence that Medtronic, with its $16 billion in revenues last year, is located in the congressional district of the House bill’s sponsor, Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN).

While many healthcare companies pay substantial federal income tax, there are companies working to repeal the excise tax that happen to be long-time tax dodgers. For example, General Electric, the parent company of GE Healthcare, has paid an average 2 percent federal income tax rate over the last ten years. Our recent Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers study showed medical giant Baxter International had a 2008-2010 average federal income tax rate of negative 7.1 percent.

Curiously, Abbott Laboratories, the seventh-largest medical device manufacturer, has 32 offshore tax haven subsidiaries. That might explain why the company reports that it makes a lot of money in foreign countries, but generates losses in the U.S. – even though half of its revenues are here. Boston Scientific’s SEC filings suggest a similar strategy.

The medical device industry, which has been floundering for reasons of its own making, is squealing about a modest tax it’s likely to pass along to customers anyway. Directing more of its budget to innovation rather than lobbying might be a better solution for them, and for America’s health care consumers.

On Wednesday, CTJ heard that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner asking for an immediate vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $1 million.  We crunched a few numbers and shot off a press release pointing out the fiscal folly of the plan.  Bloggers, reporters, pundits, outlets of all stripes and one very important editorial board cited CTJ’s numbers about the staggering cost of moving the threshold from the $250,000 mark previously set by President Obama.

In his article at RollingStone.com called “Democrats About to Give Away the Store on Bush Tax Cuts. Seriously?,” Jared Bernstein writes that “the (excellent) Citizens for Tax Justice – CTJ also points out that about half the benefits of this higher threshold accrue to – wait for it – millionaires.” He opined that moving the threshold to $1 million is “a bad genie to let out of the bottle.”

Also citing CTJ’s numbers, a Washington Post editorial decried Pelosi’s “risky pander” on the tax cuts, commenting on the minority leader’s “interesting definition of what constitutes the middle class.” The editorial ended with this question: “Do Democrats really want their new slogan to be ‘Almost as irresponsible as the Republicans?’”

The tax geek publication Bureau of National Affairs Daily Tax Report (subscription required) noted that “Citizens for Tax Justice skewered Pelosi’s request, saying that what she is actually proposing is a ‘windfall for millionaires.’”

In noting, “This town may never agree on who is middle-class, but surely we can agree it doesn't include anyone who makes over a million dollars a year,” CTJ’s Bob McIntyre helped frame the early coverage of what we hope will be a short lived idea on Capitol Hill.

Over 30 million Americans will take to the roads this Memorial Day weekend, and it’s all but guaranteed that many of them will be unhappy about the price of gas.  But while it’s easy to get frustrated by high prices at the pump, it’s also important that motorists realize gas taxes are not to blame for those high prices, and that gas taxes are absolutely essential to the safety and efficiency of the infrastructure we use everyday.

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) explains in a pair of new policy briefs, federal and state gas taxes are the main sources of funding for the roads, bridges, and transit systems that keep our economy moving (and that make our summer vacations possible).  Roughly 90 percent of federal transportation revenues come from the federal gas tax, while state gas taxes are the single most important source of transportation revenue under the control of state lawmakers.

Moreover, the amount of money we’re spending on gas taxes is much lower than what we used to pay. Families today are spending a smaller share of their household budgets on gas taxes than they have in about three decades—and that share is continuing to decline.

Of course, a low gas tax has a cost.  The federal government is increasingly using borrowed money to pay for our roads and bridges, while states that lack the luxury of borrowing are taking money away from education and other priorities in order to fund basic road repairs.  Meanwhile, even with these infusions of cash, the condition of our transportation infrastructure is continuing to decline.

ITEP’s new policy briefs put this issue into perspective by explaining how gas taxes work, their importance as a transportation revenue source, the specific problems confronting gas taxes, and the types of gas tax reforms that are needed to overcome these problems.

Read More:

• The Federal Gas Tax: Long Overdue for Reform (2-page brief)
• State Gasoline Taxes: Built to Fail, But Fixable (2-page brief)
• Building a Better Gas Tax (ITEP’s 50-state report from December 2011)

Photo of man pumping gas via Teresia Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

For Immediate Release: May 23, 2012

Minority Leader Pelosi’s “Middle Class” Tax Plan Benefits Millionaires, According to New Citizens for Tax Justice Estimate

Washington, DC – In seeking an immediate vote in the House of Representatives to extend tax cuts on incomes up to $1 million, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is actually proposing a windfall for millionaires, according to a preliminary analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice. Pelosi’s proposal to extend the Bush income tax cuts for taxpayers’ first $1 million of income is a departure from President Obama’s proposal to extend the tax cuts for the first $250,000 that a married couple makes and the first $200,000 a single person makes.

“This town may never agree on who is middle-class, but surely we can agree it doesn’t include anyone who makes over a million dollars a year,” said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

■ Pelosi’s proposal would save 43 percent less revenue than Obama’s plan.
CTJ’s preliminary estimates show that Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts for the first $250,000 or $200,000 of income a taxpayer makes would save between $60 billion and $70 billion in 2013 compared to the GOP proposal to extend all the tax cuts, depending on economic conditions. Leader Pelosi’s proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts for the first $1 million of income would save 43 percent less revenue than Obama’s proposal.

■ 50 percent of the additional tax cuts proposed by Pelosi would go to millionaires.
The additional tax cut that would result from Pelosi’s plan compared to Obama’s plan (the additional tax cut resulting from extending the Bush tax provisions for taxpayers’ first $1 million of income instead of “just” their first $250,000 or $200,000 of income) would not be targeted towards the “middle class.” In fact, 50 percent of this additional tax cut would go to taxpayers with adjusted gross income (AGI) in excess of $1 million.

This would result because under Pelosi’s proposal, a married couple making $3 million a year, for example, would continue to pay the lower tax rates (enacted under President Bush) on $1 million of their income. Under Obama’s proposal, a married couple making $3 million a year would continue to pay the lower tax rates on just $250,000 of their income.

Taxpayers with incomes exceeding $1 million would therefore receive substantially larger tax cuts under Pelosi’s proposal than they would under Obama’s proposal.

Also see our fact sheet about these figures.

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation (www.ctj.org).

Facebook® co-founder Eduardo Saverin is facing mounting public scorn for renouncing his US citizenship, presumably to save some tax money (which he says is not the case). There are even two US Senators after him! He left in September but the pile-on is happening this week because of Facebook’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) of its stock: Saverin’s share will be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion.

Saving Capital Gains Taxes
If Eduardo Saverin were a US citizen and sold his stock, most of that income would be subject to special low rate capital gains taxes of 15 percent (or 20 percent in future years if the new rate goes into effect January 1 as scheduled). By renouncing his citizenship, Saverin avoids paying those current and future capital gains taxes (and he would never have to pay the full income tax rate that Facebook employees exercising their stock options will be paying), but he does have to pay an "exit tax" (see below). Saverin now lives in Singapore, which doesn’t have a capital gains tax. 

Lowering the “Exit Tax”
When wealthy Americans give up their citizenship, they must pay an “exit tax” which treats all of their assets as if they’d been sold for fair market value (the actual tax payment can be deferred until the assets are sold). The fair market value of publicly-traded stock is what it traded for that day; privately-held stock must be appraised.

A spokesman for Saverin said that he renounced his citizenship last September, well ahead of this week’s Facebook IPO. Therefore, the stock’s valuation for “exit tax” purposes was likely substantially below its expected $38 IPO value, allowing Saverin to reduce his exit tax cost.

Not Tax, But Financial Decision
According to a spokesman, Saverin is expatriating for financial, not tax reasons. He doesn’t mind paying tax, he says, he just dislikes the complicated rules. He claims that the US rules, like the recently enacted Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), are preventing him from making some foreign investments he’d like to make.

Why It Feels Like Treason
Saverin emigrated to the US with his family at age 13 when his name turned up on a list of potential kidnap victims in his native Brazil where criminal gangs target the children of wealthy citizens and hold them for ransom. In the US, not only was Saverin safe from such violence, but he benefited enormously from government investment in education, the court system, and the Internet. Would he be a billionaire today if his family had relocated somewhere else?

Farhad Manjoo, a fellow immigrant, wrote a brilliant post (one of many, including this one) on the IT blog PandoDaily about what Eduardo Saverin owes America (nearly everything) including, quite possibly, his life. Taxes are the least of it.

In February, we noted that Facebook® will get huge federal and state income tax refunds and pay no tax for years to come because of an absurd tax break related to the stock options it granted to employees.

When employees exercise their stock options, they pay income tax on the difference between what they paid for the stock (its exercise price) and its fair market value (what it’s trading for). The employer, meanwhile, gets a tax deduction equal to the amount of that difference their employees report – even though the employer isn’t actually out any cash.

This week we have a vivid example of why this deduction makes no sense, and why Senator Carl Levin wants to see this loophole closed, too.

In February, Facebook estimated its tax deduction for the stock options it gave its employees to be $7.5 billion, based on the price of its soon-to-be publicly offered shares. But with its IPO price going up and up, the company has revised its estimated tax deduction. In documents filed with the SEC on May 15, Facebook now estimates the employee stock options that will be exercised in connection with the IPO will result in tax deductions for the company of $16 billion – more than twice their initial estimate!  This massive deduction will cost the federal and state governments about $6.4 billion in lost tax revenue.

The stock option loophole overall will cost the US treasury and taxpayers $25 billion over the next ten years. Surely there’s a better use of that money than making Mark Zuckerberg richer.

Photo of Facebook Logo via Dull Hunk Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

House Ways and Means chair Paul Ryan’s budget proposal drew plaudits from some observers who didn’t notice its fundamental weakness: its utter failure to specify which tax “loopholes” it would close to pay for deficit reduction. As we’ve noted in the past, Ryan has a good reason not to disclose details on the tax side of his plan: they don’t add up. CTJ has shown that the Ryan plan’s promised top income tax rate of 25 percent would be insufficient to pay for federal spending at Reagan-era levels, let alone the current decade. 

Now, as details of Ryan’s plan emerge, it’s becoming clearer that its spending cuts are equally illusory, relying on alleged cost-saving measures that would likely cost more in the long term than they help right now. Case in point: Ryan’s plan to eviscerate the Census Bureau and eliminate its American Community Survey (ACS), an annual survey that provides a rapid-response supplement to the decennial Census.

As Businessweek notes, cuts to Census budgets in the past decade prevented Congress and the Obama administration from being able to quickly diagnose the scope of the financial sector’s collapse in 2007.  One expert observed, “The government saved $8 million, but how many trillions were lost as a result of not being able to see the crisis coming?”

Ironically, as the New York Times explains, the ACS itself was actually created as a sensible cost-cutting strategy, designed to provide more timely data than the decennial Census could.  Even the US Chamber of Commerce has vocally opposed further cuts to Census funding because it helps businesses large and small to inform their planning.  Which is why top conservative policy think tanks support the ACS, too.

An adequately funded Census Bureau is the best vehicle we have for finding a path to sustained economic growth for all of us; there is widespread agreement that without its data, we will be flying blind.

The CEOs of 18 large corporations have published an open letter to the Treasury Secretary seeking to extend tax breaks on investment income that overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthy. Barring Congressional intervention, these special breaks for capital gains and dividends will expire at the end of this year, along with all of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts.

In an era when fiscal austerity is a reality in America, what makes this request even more obscene is that of these 18 CEOs, four of them head corporations which have paid less than zero in federal income taxes in recent years, in spite of consistent profits.  Another two barely paid any, and another five have paid well below the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate. In fact, among these CEOs is Lowell McAdam of Verizon, one of the most notorious tax dodging companies in the U.S.  

The 11 corporations among the 18 that have paid less than the legal federal income tax rate are:

Gale E. Klappa, Wisconsin Energy Corp. — Average Negative 13.2% tax rate 2008-11
David M. McClanahan, CenterPoint Energy — Average Negative 11.3 tax rate 2008-11
Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications Inc. — Average Negative 3.8% tax rate 2008-11
James E. Rogers, Duke Energy Corp. — Average Negative 3.5% tax rate 2008-11
Benjamin G.S. Fowke III, Xcel Energy — Average 1.0% tax rate 2008-10
Gerard M. Anderson, DTE Energy Co. — Average 0.2% tax rate 2008-11
Gregory L. Ebel, Spectra Energy Corp. — Average 13.6% tax rate 2008-10
Thomas A. Fanning, Southern Co. — Average 17.4% tax rate 2008-10
Glen F. Post III, CenturyLink Inc. —Average 23.5% tax rate 2008-10
Thomas Farrell II, Dominion Resources Inc. — Average 24% tax rate 2008-10
D. Scott Davis, United Parcel Service — Average 24.1% tax rate 2008-10

To bolster their case, these CEO’s are parroting the common claim that ending special preferences for dividends and capital gains (both of which are predominantly held by the wealthy) will depress economic activity. History shows this is not the case.

The fact is, about 85 percent of the expiring tax breaks for capital gains and dividends go to the richest five percent of Americans; most people won’t even notice if they expire.

The fact is, two thirds of all dividends are not subject to any personal income tax because they go to tax exempt entities rather than individuals.

Why is it that when corporate CEOs speak out on tax issues, they are treated like objective financial experts, as if they had no agenda other than job growth? You only have to think for a moment to realize that CEOs, for starters, typically own substantial amounts of stock in the companies they head, so in asking for reduced taxes on investment income, these 18 CEOs are pushing for substantial personal tax cuts for themselves – on top of the huge tax breaks their companies already receive.  Futher, the corporate boards who hire and fire these CEOs are populated by the super rich who’d benefit from things like capital gains tax breaks, so they are also serving their bosses.

These 18 captains of industry are part of an ongoing and well financed effort to limit taxes on business and on the rich. Why? Because it serves their interest. Our media and lawmakers need to bear that in mind.

Remember the Tea Party? Well, freshman Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is living up to his reputation as the darling of the Taxed Enough Already movement that shook the 2010 elections. 

Rand Paul, son of Libertarian firebrand and GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, is currently blocking the Senate’s ratification of an amendment to the US-Swiss tax treaty, apparently worried about the right of tax evaders to financial privacy. He says the language is too “sweeping” and might jeopardize US constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. But as one former Treasury Department official said, Paul's move “smacks of protecting financial secrecy for those who may have committed criminal tax fraud in the US.”

The US and Swiss governments renegotiated their bilateral tax treaty as part of the 2009 settlement of the UBS case. That case charged the Swiss mega-bank UBS with facilitating tax evasion by US customers. Under the settlement agreement, UBS paid $780 million in criminal penalties and agreed to provide the IRS with names of 4,450 US account holders.

Before it could supply those names, however, UBS needed to be shielded from Swiss penalties for violating that country’s legendary bank-secrecy laws. The renegotiation of the US-Swiss tax treaty addressed that problem by providing, as most other recent tax treaties do, that a nation’s bank-secrecy laws cannot be a barrier to exchange of tax information.

Many tax haven countries were hiding behind their bank secrecy laws to deflect requests for account holder information, and the IRS and Justice Department have been investigating 11 Swiss financial institutions on criminal charges of facilitating tax evasion.

The Senate must ratify the treaty changes – which is normally a routine procedure.

By blocking the ratification, Senator Paul is holding up the exchange of information in the UBS case (and others) and hampering IRS efforts to crack down on tax evasion by Americans.

Tax evasion by individual taxpayers is estimated to deprive the US Treasury of as much as $70 billion per year (corporate offshore tax avoidance is estimated to cost the Treasury an additional $90 billion per year).

Given Senator Paul’s obvious concern about the deficit, he might have a hard time explaining to honest American taxpayers how he justifies protecting tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts as the deficit grows ever larger.

Photo of Rand Paul via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Political leaders love to claim fealty to the idea of “loophole-closing” tax reform, but refuse to provide details on the specific tax breaks they would eliminate. As we’ve recently noted, House Budget Chair, Rep. Paul Ryan, is one of the worst offenders when it comes to punting on specific tax breaks he’d eliminate. President Obama has also avoided naming closeable loopholes in his outline for corporate tax reform. Yes, lawmakers are glad to pose convincingly as advocates of tax reform without assuming any of the political risks involved with real loophole-closing reforms.

Earlier this month, presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a welcome departure from this pattern, signaled by the headline, “Romney Specifies Deductions He'd Cut.”  The presumptive GOP nominee told a Florida audience that his plans for tax reform included eliminating the second home mortgage interest deduction for high earners.

This is a perfectly sensible reform, and is one that many tax reform advocates on both sides of the aisle (most recently, President Bush’s tax reform commission) have agreed on.  It also allows us to take Romney’s tax proposals a bit more seriously, since he has said he plans to cut income tax rates by 20 percent and pay for it with (as yet unspecified) loophole-closing reforms.

A few days later, however, Romney’s campaign backed away from this reform after Newt Gingrich accused him of surrenderring to "class warfare rhetoric of the Left." This and other pushback from within his own party led one Romney surrogate to explain it this way: the candidate “was just discussing ideas that came up on the campaign trail” with some friendly donors.

This strategic retreat may make sense politically (think of all the second homes in battleground states), but it also puts Romney’s tax plan squarely in talk-is-cheap territory—asking all the easy questions but answering none of the hard ones.

Photo of Mitt Romney via Dave Lawrence Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Representing a remarkable defeat for corporate tax dodgers, a spokesman for the so-called "Win America Campaign" confirmed this week that it has “temporarily suspended” its lobbying for a tax repatriation amnesty. The coalition of mostly high-tech companies pushed for months for a tax amnesty for repatriated offshore corporate profits. The campaign once seemed unstoppable because so many huge corporations, and veteran lobbyists with ties to lawmakers, were behind it. 

What supporters call a tax "repatriation holiday," or more accurately, a tax amnesty, allows US corporations a window during which they can bring back (repatriate) foreign profits to the US at a hugely discounted tax rate. The holiday’s proponents argue this would encourage multi-national corporations to bring offshore profits back to the US.

CTJ has often pointed out that the only real solution is to end the tax break that encourages U.S. corporations to shift their profits offshore in the first place — the rule allowing corporations to defer (delay indefinitely) U.S. taxes on foreign profits. Deferral encourages corporations to shift their profits to offshore tax havens, and a repatriation amnesty would only encourage more of the same abuse.

The Win America Campaign and its long list of deep pocketed corporate backers (including Apple and Cisco) spared no expense in pushing the repatriation amnesty, spending some $760,000 over the last year. This sum allowed the coalition to hire a breathtaking 160 lobbyists (including at least 60 former staffers for current members of Congress) to promote their favored policy in Washington.

So what prevented Win America from winning its tax amnesty? It was the steady march of objective economic studies put out by groups from across the political spectrum demonstrating how the holiday would send more jobs and profits offshore and result in huge revenue losses.

One of the toughest blows the repatriation amnesty took came from the well-respected Congressional Research Service’s (CRS) report showing what happened last time: the benefits from the repatriation holiday in 2004 went primarily to dividend payments for corporate shareholders rather than to job creation as promised. In fact, the CRS found that many of the biggest corporate beneficiaries of the 2004 holiday had since actually reduced their US workforce.

On top of this, the bipartisan and official scorekeeper in Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), found that a new repatriation holiday would cost $80 billion, which is a lot of money for a policy that would not create any jobs. Advocates for the tax holiday responded with studies of their own claiming the measure would actually raise revenue, but Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) immediately debunked the bogus assumptions underlying these reports. 

On top of the solid research there was the incredible and rare consensus among policy think tanks across the political spectrum to oppose the measure. The groups opposing a repatriation holiday included CTJ, Tax Policy Center, Tax Foundation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Heritage Foundation, to name a few.

The suspension of lobbying for the repatriation amnesty is a victory for ordinary taxpayers. And while the Win America Campaign isn’t dead – one lobbyist promised that "if there was an opportunity to move it, the band would get back together and it would rev up again" – its setback validates our work here at CTJ on corporate tax avoidance in all its forms. 

When CTJ analyzed Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan last year, we concluded it would cut taxes for the richest one percent by $210,000 on average and raise taxes for the bottom three-fifths of Americans by $2,000, on average if in effect in 2011. This did not surprise us, since the 9-9-9 plan incorporates elements of a “flat tax” and a national sales tax (often misleadingly called a “Fair Tax”) which are both far more regressive than our current tax system. We also concluded that the 9-9-9 plan would collect $340 billion less than our existing tax system in 2011 alone. What does surprise us is that people are still talking about the former pizza CEO’s tax plan, which is the focus of a two-day “Patriot Summit” that Cain is hosting today in Washington.

Today, Cain’s Revolution on the Hill will  roll out “the 9-9-9 educational campaign that will sweep the country in the Summer of 2012.” 

Flat tax and national sales tax plans vary, but they all would leave investment income – most of which goes to the richest Americans – untaxed. The “flat tax,” which is promoted by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, does not consist of one flat tax rate but actually two tax rates when you include the zero percent rate for investment income.

The national sales tax, which is promoted by the organization FairTax.org, is a straight-forward consumption tax, and this is likely to have the greatest impact on lower-income families who have no choice but to put all of their income towards consumption. (The other national, broad-based consumption tax you hear a lot about is a value-added tax, or VAT).

Cain is not the only presidential candidate to propose these types of radical changes to our tax system. Texas Governor Rick Perry flirted with both the flat tax and a national sales tax. Both Perry and Newt Gingrich eventually settled on a “flat tax” that would, like other flat tax proposals, exempt investment income from tax.

Watch this space for a look at other flat or fair tax proposals that surface during this election year.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney took some heat this winter for delaying release of his tax returns and then, in January, released only one year’s worth (and an estimate for 2011). Now the calls for more disclosure are heating up again since the Washington Post reported that Romney is using an obscure ethics rule loophole to limit the disclosure of his Bain Capital holdings. An earlier Los Angeles Times article reported that Romney’s financial disclosure did not list many of the funds and partnerships that showed up in his 2010 tax returns, eleven of which are based in low-tax foreign countries such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.

While it’s Romney’s offshore holdings that are making news, the fact is any government official using offshore tax havens right now is allowed to keep that a secret.

But that’s about to change. On March 29, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN) introduced a bill that would require members of Congress, candidates for federal office, and high-ranking federal government officials to identify which of their assets are located in tax havens when they file their required financial disclosures. The Financial Disclosure to Reduce Tax Haven Abuse Act of 2012 (S. 2253) would amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

Although there’s nothing illegal about having an offshore account, estimates are that abuses facilitated by these accounts cost the U.S. Treasury over $100 Billion per year in lost tax revenue. And while the Durbin-Franken bill won’t make it illegal, it would have the effect of limiting that sort of tax dodging among public officials – or weed out candidates unwilling to tolerate a little sunshine.

In his floor statement introducing the bill, Sen. Durbin stated “it might seem ridiculous that we don’t already know whether candidates and Members of Congress are using offshore tax havens.” Sen. Franken, in the press release, said “Americans deserve transparency from public officials.” We could not agree more.

Photo of Mitt Romney via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced last week: the “Small Business Tax Cut Act.”  As it stands right now, a lot of truly small businesses would not actually qualify for the deduction it offers, for 20 percent of “small business” income.

Think of a mom-and-pop mail-order business or the local shoe repair shop where you see the owners working hard every day, but no other employees. Because the bill caps the deduction at 50 percent of the wages paid to non-owners, many family businesses won’t qualify because their only employees are family members who are owners.

While the legislation caps the amount of the deduction (at half of non-employee payroll), there is no limitation on the type or amount of income that business can have. So highly profitable operations like Oprah Winfrey’s production company or the Trump Tower Sales & Leasing office would both qualify for the deduction simply because they have fewer than 500 employees on payroll.

Who else would qualify? Professional sports teams (including teams owned by Mitt Romney’s friends) with their multi-million-dollar salaries to non-owner players. So would private equity firms, hedge funds, and other “small businesses” with income in the millions, or even billions, of dollars, along with most of the top law and lobbying firms inside the Beltway and elsewhere.

The bill is currently projected to cost $45.9 billion in its first year – but its benefits are not at all clear. So far it seems that in Rep. Cantor’s dictionary, “small business” is defined as “my rich friends.”

Large majorities of Americans, including small business owners, want profitable corporations to pay their fair share in taxes, but none of the major proposals in Washington would make that happen.  They will close some loopholes while creating others and, meantime, leave the amount of revenues U.S. companies contribute just about where it is now – at an historic low.

Why the disconnect between public opinion and political action? Could it be because 98 percent of the sitting members of Congress have accepted campaign donations from the country’s most aggressive, successful tax avoiding corporations?

Citizens for Tax Justice and U.S. PIRG’s new report Loopholes for Sale pursues the intersection of corporate campaign contributions to members of Congress and the absence of Congressional action to close corporate tax loopholes and raise additional revenue from corporate taxes.

Loopholes for Sale details how thirty major, profitable corporations (a.k.a. the Dirty Thirty) with a collective federal income tax bill of negative $10.6 billion have made Congressional campaign contributions totaling $41 million over four election cycles. This includes PAC contributions to 524 current members of Congress.

These 30 tax dodging companies specifically targeted the leadership of both political parties, and members of the tax writing committees in the House and Senate. Top recipients of their largesse since the 2006 campaign have been:

1- House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) - $379,850.00
2- Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) - $336,5000.00
3- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) – $320,900.00
4- Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO)Former House Minority Whip 2003-08) – $220,500.00
5- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) - $177,001.00

These companies – including GE, Boeing, Honeywell and FedEx—also gave disproportionately to members of the tax writing committees, including $3.1 million to current members of the House Ways and Means Committee and $1.9 million to members of the Senate Finance Committee.

The “pervasiveness of that money across party lines speaks volumes about why major proposals to close corporate loopholes have not even come up for a vote,” says US PIRG’s Dan Smith.

So if the public is so clearly supportive of closing corporate tax loopholes and making corporations pay more than they currently are, why aren’t our elected officials moving forward on corporate tax reform? This report, along with our earlier Representation with Taxation on corporate lobbying expenditures, exposes how part of the answer may be found by taking a hard look at the way some of America’s largest companies translate wealth into influence.

On Monday, Apple™ announced that it will distribute tens of billions of its cash holdings as dividends to shareholders, ending speculation over how the company will use the large pile of cash it has been sitting on. CFO Peter Oppenheimer went out of his way to point out that the dividends would be paid entirely from Apple’s U.S. cash, which means the $54 billion Apple has stashed in foreign countries will stay there. Oppenheimer explained that “repatriating cash from overseas would result in significant tax consequences under U.S. law.”

He’s not kidding! CTJ has estimated that Apple has paid a tax rate of just over three percent on this stash of “foreign” earnings, a clear indicator that much of this cash is likely parked in offshore tax havens and has never been taxed by any government. If Apple brought this cash back to the U.S., they’d likely pay something close to the 35 percent corporate tax rate that the law prescribes. The resulting $17 billion tax payment would be more than double the $8.3 billion in federal taxes that Apple has paid on its $83 billion in worldwide profits – over the last 11 years.

Apple is part of the Win America Coalition that’s been lobbying hard for a repatriation holiday (a.k.a. tax amnesty) which would allow them to bring back those unrepatriated profits at a super-low tax rate. But that would only encourage U.S. multinational corporations to shift even more profits offshore in anticipation of the next holiday.

Apple’s CFO was astonishingly blunt: “we do not want to incur the tax cost.”  Rather than shirking its basic obligation to help pay for the public goods that contribute to its extraordinary success, Apple’s executives might want to “think different” about its tax dodging ways before its devoted consumers start thinking differently about their favorite high-tech brand.

Photo of Apple Logo via Marko Pako Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The latest monthly statement by the Treasury Department contains a startling revelation: the amount that Treasury expects to collect in corporate taxes in 2012 has been slashed by more than 28 percent, from $333 down to $237 billion.

With such a dramatic revision, one might expect that lagging corporate profits or a sudden economic disruption is to blame. In reality however, corporate tax revenue continues to limp in spite of the fact that corporate profits have rebounded to record highs.

If corporate profits are not behind this $96 billion drop in expected corporate tax revenue, then what is?

The Wall Street Journal’s David Reilly suspects that there are two critical drivers: the offshoring of more profits through overseas entities by multi-national corporations; and the continuation of extravagant corporate tax breaks for accelerated depreciation of assets like equipment. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came to the same basic conclusion, explaining that corporate tax breaks and loopholes played an important role in driving the corporate tax rate to a 40 year low in 2011.

In order to prevent the continued decline of the corporate tax, Congress and the President should enact revenue-positive corporate tax reform, rather than their current revenue-neutral approach. Right now, political leaders of all stripes are proposing merely to eliminate some tax breaks but continue or even expand others and possibly reduce the statutory rate. With the federal deficit growing every day, asking profitable U.S. companies to pay something closer to the statutory tax rate is a reasonable (not to mention popular) approach.

Chart from is from the Wall Street article "U.S. Tax Haul Trails Profit Surge"

General Electric Cites its “Deferred” (Not Yet Paid) Taxes and Taxes Paid to Foreign Governments, Offers No Evidence It Paid More in U.S. Corporate Income Taxes

In response to CTJ's recent finding that GE had an effective federal corporate income tax rate of just 2.3 percent over ten years, GE’s press office issued a short statement designed to divert attention from its tax-avoiding ways. GE has nothing to say to contradict the figures we cite from its own annual reports.

A short report from CTJ responds to each of GE's claims and provides all of the numbers used to calculate GE's ten-year corporate income tax rate of 2.3 percent.

For Immediate Release: February 27, 2012 (rev. 4/12)

Contact: Anne Singer, 202-299-1066, ext. 27

General Electric Paid Only Two Percent Federal Income Tax Rate Over the Past Decade, Citizens for Tax Justice Analysis Finds; Actual Payments Were Probably Lower

Washington, DC – General Electric’s (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.

Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), “GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any.” But don’t worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), “our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital’s recovery.”

As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE’s effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.

“I don’t think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE’s long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be ‘normal,’ ” said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.  “But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid.”

Citizens for Tax Justice’s summary of GE’s federal income taxes over the past decade shows that:

O From 2006 to 2011, GE’s net federal income taxes were negative $3.1 billion, despite $38.2 billion in pretax U.S. profits over the six years.

O Over the past decade, GE’s effective federal income tax rate on its $81.2 billion in pretax U.S. profits has been at most 1.8 percent.

McIntyre noted that GE has yet to pay even that paltry 1.8 percent. In fact, at the end of 2011, GE reports that it has claimed $3.9 billion in cumulative income tax reductions on its tax returns over the years that it has not reported in its shareholder reports — because it expects the IRS will not approve these “uncertain” tax breaks, and GE will have to give the money back.

GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010.”  The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero – or less – in federal income taxes in the last three years.  The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/. Page 24 of the report explains “uncertain” tax breaks.

###

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation (www.ctj.org).

Founded in 1980, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan research organization, based in Washington, DC, that focuses on federal and state tax policy. ITEP's mission is to inform policymakers and the public of the effects of current and proposed tax policies on tax fairness, government budgets, and sound economic policy (www.itepnet.org).

Note: GE’s profits and taxes for 2009 and 2010 have been slightly revised from an earlier version of this release. The earlier version inadvertently used GE’s restated 2009 and 2010 figures from GE’s 2011 annual report. Those restated figures excluded the half of NBC that GE sold to Comcast in 2011, and did not reflect GE’s actual results for those two years.

On February 17, the President plans to visit a Boeing plant in Washington state to tout his proposed new tax breaks for American manufacturers. This is an odd setting to discuss new tax cuts, because over the past 10 years (2002-11), Boeing has paid nothing in net federal income taxes, despite $32 billion in pretax U.S. profits. A new fact sheet from CTJ explains.

Read the fact sheet.

Photo of Boeing Plant via Jeff McNiell Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

It’s a basic matter of fairness that state sales taxes should be applied to things we buy, regardless of whether a purchase is made online or in a brick-and-mortar store.  Back in 1992, however, before online shopping even existed, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that made this a lot more difficult by telling out-of-state retailers (mostly catalogues back then) they didn’t have to collect sales tax – at least until the federal government says otherwise.  In recent years, the explosion in online shopping has made the issue more urgent, and we expect that in 2012 the push for a more rational online sales tax policy could reach critical mass as more states seek to restore lost revenues.

Federal legislation. Sales taxes owed on Internet purchases can’t be collected comprehensively until the federal government empowers states to require that online retailers collect the tax.  Until then, the best states can do is make use of the partial fixes discussed below.  Fortunately, a federal solution might not be as far off as it once seemed.  Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress that would allow for a comprehensive solution, and an increasingly influential coalition of state lawmakers and traditional retailers are pushing for a national law.

State legislation.  Even though federal legislation is needed to fix the online sales tax problem in its entirety, states do have tools at their disposal for chipping away at it right now.  Specifically, states can require that out-of-state online retailers collect sales taxes if they are partnered with in-state affiliate businesses, or if they have in-state subsidiaries or sister companies.  Discussion of enacting a law of this type is currently underway in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia, and we expect that other states will join this list soon.

State-level deals with Amazon.com.  Amazon.com has a long history of shirking its responsibility to collect sales taxes, but to its credit the company seems to have realized that it won’t be able to continue this dodge forever.  In just the last year, Amazon has struck deals with South Carolina, California, Tennessee, and Indiana to begin collecting sales taxes at a specific future date.  Recent reports say that Florida might join this list soon, as Amazon is eyeing building a distribution center in the Sunshine State – if it can convince lawmakers to let it off the tax-collecting hook for just a few more years.  We’re sympathetic to traditional retailers who point out that Amazon can and should begin collecting sales taxes sooner rather than later, and hope that this unwieldy patchwork of agreements helps build the case for a national solution.

Citizens for Tax Justice Director, Bob McIntyre, writes in The the Hill's Congress Blog today:

....Just as Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan Congress did in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, we should crack down on wasteful, often harmful corporate tax subsidies. The 1986 reforms curbed useless tax breaks for oil companies, public utilities, defense contractors and a wide array of corporate special interests. It rewrote the way we tax multinational corporations to make it harder for them to avoid their U.S. tax responsibilities by moving their U.S. profits to foreign tax havens. And by doing so, it made our economy more productive and increased corporate tax payments by more than a third.

Indeed, if just the 280 corporations that CTJ analyzed in our 2011 study had paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate on their U.S. profits over the 2008-10 period (instead of only half that much), they would have paid an additional $223 billion in corporate income taxes.

Read the full essay here.

(See CTJ director's full explanation of Facebook's use of the stock option deduction here.)

Facebook, Inc.’s upcoming initial public stock offering (IPO) paperwork reveals that it plans to wipe out all of the company’s federal and state income tax obligations for 2012 and actually generate a half billion dollar tax refund. As part of the plan, Facebook co-founder and controlling stockholder, Mark Zuckerberg can expect a $2.8 billion after tax cash windfall.

According to Facebook’s SEC filing, the company has issued stock options to favored employees, including Zuckerberg, that will allow them to purchase 187 million Facebook shares for little or nothing in 2012. Options for 120 million shares (worth $4.8 billion) are owned by Zuckerberg. The company indicates that it expects all of the 187 million in stock options to be exercised in 2012.

The tax law says that if a corporation issues options for employees to buy the company’s stock in the future for its price when the option issued, then if the stock has gone up in value when employees exercise the options, the company gets to deduct the difference between what the employee bought it for and its market price.

When, as Facebook expects, the 187 million stock options are cashed in this year, Facebook will get $7.5 billion in tax deductions (which will reduce the company’s federal and state taxes by $3 billion). According to Facebook, these tax deductions should exceed the company’s U.S. taxable 2012 income and result in a net operating loss (NOL) that can then be carried back to the preceding two years to offset its past taxes, resulting in a refund of up to $500 million.

Senator Carl Levin, who has proposed to limit the stock option loophole, told the New York Times, “Facebook may not pay any corporate income taxes on its profits for a generation. When profitable corporations can use the stock option tax deduction to pay zero corporate income taxes for years on end, average taxpayers are forced to pick up the tax burden. It isn’t right, and we can’t afford it.”

To be sure, Zuckerberg will have to pay federal and state income taxes (at ordinary tax rates) when he exercises his $4.8 billion worth of stock options in 2012. That’s only fair, since that $4.8 billion obviously represents income to him. But even after paying taxes, he’ll still end up with $2.8 billion.

The problem isn’t Zuckerberg’s personal taxes but Facebook’s. Why should companies get a tax deduction for something that cost them nothing?  If an airline allows its workers to fly free or at a discounted price on flights that aren’t full (for vacations, etc.) airlines don’t get a tax deduction (beyond actual cost) for that, even though the workers get taxed on the benefit, because it costs the airline nothing.

In the case of stock options, there is also a zero cost to the employer. So it’s more reasonable to conclude that while employees should be taxed on stock option benefits (“all income from whatever source derived” as the tax code states), employers should only be able to deduct their cost of providing those benefits, which, in the case of Facebook and Zuckerberg, is zero.

The bottom line is that there’s something obviously wrong with a tax loophole that lets highly profitable companies like Facebook make more money after tax than before tax. What’s about to happen at Facebook is a perfect illustration of why non-cash “expenses” for stock options should not be tax deductible.

See page 12 of our Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers report for more about the 185 other companies we found exploiting the stock option loophole.

Photo of Facebook Logo via Dull Hunk and photo Mark Zuckerberg via KK+ Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

CTJ's Steve Wamhoff contributes a bit of persuasive writing to US News & World Report's Debate Club feature this week. The question before the debaters: Should Mitt Romney Pay More Taxes?

Wamhoff writes, "The revelation that Mitt Romney received an income of $21 million in 2010 and paid just 13.9 percent of that in federal income taxes has highlighted an enormous problem in our tax code. Income from investments (or income that is manipulated to appear to come from investments) is taxed at lower rates than income from work. And this is a huge benefit for the rich.... Warren Buffett is right. People like him, and Mitt Romney, should pay more to support the society that made their fabulous fortunes possible."

Read the whole piece here, and then vote for us and against the tired old supply side arguments the experts from American Enterprise Institute and the Club for Growth are offering.

Photo of Mitt Romney via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The rapid-fire succession of GOP debates has continued, with four more occurring in just the last couple weeks. Here we deconstruct the most ludicrous or notable quotes from each candidate:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: …when I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets...

It was exciting to see Ron Paul finally call Gingrich out during the latest debate for repeatedly claiming that he balanced the federal budget four years in a row. Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre thoroughly debunked this claim over 9 months ago when Gingrich first starting making it, yet until now none of the GOP candidates have called him out for it.

Former Governor Mitt Romney: I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes.

Romney does not pay “a lot of taxes.” He paid an effective tax rate of less than 14% on his $22 million in 2010, which is actually a lower rate than many individuals making just $60,000 pay.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: I'm prepared to describe my 15 percent flat tax as the Mitt Romney flat tax. I'd like to bring everybody else down to Mitt's rate, not try to bring him up to some other rate.

Gingrich’s $18 trillion tax plan would not bring everyone down to the rate that Romney pays because it would actually further reduce Romney’s tax rate to almost zero. Even Romney seemed to think that reducing his tax rate to zero would be going too far and went out of his way during a recent Republican debate to point this out to Gingrich.

Former Senator Rick Santorum: I talk about five areas where I allow deductions… one of them would be, be able to deduct losses from the sale of your home. Right now, you can't do that. You have to pay gains, depending on the amount, but you can't deduct the losses.

Ever trying to play the role of a blue collar populist, Santorum highlighted his idea to allow taxpayers to deduct losses from the sale of their home. He left out the fact that current law already allows an individual to exclude up to $250,000 of capital gains from the sale of a home. How could it be fair to exclude the gains but deduct the losses? He also ignores the fact that homeowners are already subsidized to the tune of $75 billion through the home mortgage interest deduction. A much more effective approach to helping struggling homeowners (and renters for that matter) would be for state lawmakers to enact strong property tax circuit breakers, which are better targeted to low-income households.

Representative Ron Paul: I would like to see income tax reduced to near zero as possible.

Although he has not laid out a specific long term tax plan, Paul has frequently called for the complete repeal of the 16th amendment (which allows the creation of the income tax) and might seek to replace it with a national sales or flat tax. He does not typically mention that such a plan would be extremely regressive no matter how you structure it.

With the Republican primaries now in full swing, the GOP candidates’ rhetoric on taxes has become even more disconnected from reality.

Santorum is No Blue-Collar Populist

Former Senator Rick Santorum used his new spotlight during last Saturday’s ABC-Yahoo GOP presidential candidate debate to highlight his plan to cut the corporate tax rate in half and eliminate the tax entirely for domestic manufacturing. Santorum explained the need for cutting the 35 percent tax rate by arguing that our corporate tax rate is the “highest in the world.”

While we have the second highest statutory corporate tax rate on-paper, the excess of tax breaks and loopholes in our corporate tax code make it so the effective corporate tax rate (the amount actually paid) is close to half of that. In fact, the US actually has the second lowest level of corporate taxes, as a share of its overall economy, of any developed country in the world.

Although Santorum promotes the populist aspects of his tax plan, the truth is that the majority of his proposed tax cuts would go to the richest five percent of Americans. A new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice shows that his tax plan would provide an average tax cut of $217,500 to the richest 1 percent, which is over 100 times the size of the average tax cut the middle fifth of Americans would receive.

Gingrich on a Tax By Any Other Name

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich usually offers nothing but hot air when it comes to taxes, but this week the Gingrich campaign brought up an interesting point in a new campaign ad attacking Romney for raising user fees in Massachusetts. The ad uses Romney’s support of user fees to question his anti-tax credentials because it says that user fees are essentially a “tax by another name.”

Of course, Gingrich’s ultimate conclusion is mistaken in that he assumes Romney should not have raised user fees or taxes but should simply have left public services unfunded.

But Gingrich’s criticism nonetheless acknowledges the trend among even the most infamous anti-tax governors to substantially increase user fees to avoid officially raising taxes. In fact, since 1979 virtually every state in the nation has begun to rely more heavily on user fees to raise revenue.

Huntsman’s Tax Loophole Consolidation Plan

Rhetorically, former Governor Huntsman hit it out of the park during the NBC-Facebook GOP presidential candidate debate last Sunday by declaring that we need to “say so long to corporate welfare and subsidies” and that our tax code is “chuck full of loop holes and deductions” which weigh it down to the tune of $1.1 trillion.

Unfortunately however, his tax plan, like the other GOP candidates’ tax plans, includes a “territorial” system that would exempt the offshore profits of U.S. corporations from U.S. taxes. This is essentially a way to expand and consolidate the existing loopholes that encourage U.S. companies to shift their investments offshore.

Similarly, Huntsman’s proposed changes to the personal income tax would actually add huge loopholes for the rich by exempting taxes on capital gains and stock dividends. In addition, while his plan would end a substantial amount of wasteful tax subsidies, it would also eliminate invaluable tax credits like the earned income tax credit.

In other words, Huntsman’s plan is more of a tax loophole consolidation plan for the rich and powerful, rather than a tax reform for everyone.

It seems impossible, but on the eve of the Iowa Caucus the once unstoppable ethanol tax credit expired. After three long decades and over $20 billion dollars spent, the relatively quiet expiration of this once sacred tax credit is surprising considering the pitched battles that took place earlier this year between Grover Norquist and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn over its repeal.

The fact that the credit expired on the eve of the Iowa Caucus, long considered the political bulwark against repeal, demonstrates just how far politically the credit has fallen. In fact, a survey found that even among Iowa Republican caucus goers, 57% of them favored Republican candidates calling for outright repeal of the credit.

Although the ethanol tax credit was ostensibly created to promote ethanol as a greener form of fuel, the credit has long been criticized by a wide variety of groups as a wasteful special interest tax break. As Citizens for Tax Justice Director Bob McIntyre once explained, the critical problem with subsidizing ethanol is the product itself takes “more energy to make than it saves” and that even with an exorbitant subsidy of $0.50 for every $1 gallon it was still not very competitive.

For their part, ethanol industry representatives admitted defeat, explaining that the ethanol industry had “evolved” and that now was the “right time for the incentive to expire.”

It is also the right time for scores of other tax credits to expire permanently. The ethanol tax credit is 1 of the 53 such provisions – called “extenders” because Congress quietly extends them every couple of years or so for their favored constituencies – which expired at the end of 2011, most of which are handouts to business interests. In a word, they are pork.

Let’s hope the ethanol subsidy’s death is permanent, and a sign that tax sanity is making a comeback in Congress.

Photo of Ethanol Production via Bread for the World Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

As the presidential campaigns rev up, taxes are emerging as the defining issue of the election. Unfortunately, a lot of misinformation and myths about taxes are spreading as candidates and commentators look to push their different economic agendas.

To start the election season off, here is a breakdown of the five biggest tax whoppers being told by the candidates and commentators alike.

1) Myth: 47 Percent of Americans Do Not Pay Taxes

Fact: All Americans Pay Taxes

Pundits and politicians will continue to rile up audiences this election season by claiming that half of Americans in the U.S. do not pay any taxes. This talking point is used to deflect questions about why the rich should pay their fair share.

The basis of this claim is data showing that 47 percent of Americans did not owe federal income taxes in 2009, which the recession was at it's peak. The claim ignores the much more regressive federal payroll taxes or state and local sales, income, and property taxes that all Americans pay. The reality is that three-quarters of American households actually pay more in payroll taxes than federal income taxes.

Adding to this, the very reason many low income Americans do not pay federal income taxes is because they benefit from highly effective tax credits like the earned income tax credit (EITC), which incentivize work while providing much needed support to working low and middle class family budgets.

2) Myth: The American People and Corporations Pay High Taxes

Fact: The US Has the Third Lowest Taxes of Any Developed Country in the World

Total US taxes are actually at the lowest level they’ve been since 1958. The US has the third lowest level of total taxes of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, with the exception of only Chile and Mexico. President Obama, who is often falsely accused of raising taxes, actually cut taxes for 98 percent of the country on top of temporarily extending the entirety of the Bush tax cuts.

A related claim is that the US has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. This is misleading because it’s based on the on-paper (statutory) corporate rate rather than the actual (effective) rate that corporations pay. Because of the plethora of corporate tax breaks and loopholes, the US actually has the second lowest coporate taxes as a share of GDP in the OECD. In fact, 30 major corporations, including Verizon, Boeing and General Electric, paid nothing in corporate taxes over the last 3 years.  Rather than cutting corporate taxes, the sensible solution is to pass revenue-positive corporate tax reform.

3) Myth: Cutting Taxes Creates Jobs and Raises Revenue

Fact: Tax Cuts Reduce Revenue And Are Not Associated with Economic Growth

Since the rise of supply-side economics, tax cuts for the rich have been regarded as a magic elixir that could unleash economic growth, while simultaneously increasing government revenue.

The reality is that the tax cuts that have been tried for over 30 years have proven to be a stunning failure in all regards. In fact, history has shown that the tax rate on the wealthy simply has nothing to do with economic growth. Just consider the strong growth that occurred after President Clinton increased taxes versus the dismal growth following the Bush tax cuts.

Not surprisingly, tax cuts have been definitely proven to reduce revenue. Even President Bush's own Treasury Department concluded that tax cuts do not create enough economic growth to to come close to offsetting their costs or raising revenue. The Bush tax cuts cost $2.5 trillion in their first decade and the Reagan tax cuts cost $582 billion.

4) Myth: The US tax system is very progressive because wealthy individuals already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes.

Fact: At a Time of Growing Income Inequality, the US Tax System is Basically Flat.

Conservative commentators and politicians claim that it would be unfair to raise taxes on wealthy individuals because they already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes, usually citing the fact that the top one percent of income earners pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. Once again, such claims ignore the fact that the federal income tax is just one of many taxes that individuals pay.

When you take into account all of the taxes that individuals pay, the truth is that our tax system is relatively flat. The top one percent of income earners receives 20.3 percent of total income while paying 21.5 percent of total taxes and the lowest 20 percent of income earners receive 3.5 percent of total income while still paying out two percent of total taxes.

In other words, wealthy individuals pay a high percentage of taxes because they earn a highly disproportionate amount of income. This is, of course, a consequence of growing income inequality in the United States, which is at a level not seen since before the Great Depression. 

5) Myth : The “Fair Tax” or a flat tax would be more “fair”

Fact: The “Fair Tax” or a Flat Tax Would Make Our Tax System Even More Regressive

Whether it’s Steve Forbes promoting his flat tax proposal in 1996 and 2000 or Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich in the 2012 presidential race today, the idea to sweep away our current tax system and replace it with a single rate, flat income or national sales tax (called the “Fair Tax”) has become a perennial campaign issue for Republican presidential candidates.

The simplicity of these proposals has much appeal for many Americans, who believe they would make filing taxes less complex and, at the same time, stop wealthy individuals from being able to game the tax system.

A deeper look, however, reveals that both the “fair” and flat tax are very regressive compared to our current system. One recent analysis of a typical flat tax proposal from last year shows that it would result in an average tax increase of $2,887 for the bottom 95 percent of Americans, while those in the top one percent would receive an average tax cut of over $209,562. Furthermore, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s analysis of the Fair Tax points out the under this system, the sales tax rate would have to be set at a politically and administratively unfeasible rate of at least 45 percent, and, the result would be the bottom 80 percent of American’s paying an average of 51 percent more in taxes compared to our current system.

It’s also important to note that “complexity in the tax code,” which a flat tax system purports to fix, is not caused by our progressive rate structure; rather, it’s the multitude of loopholes and tax breaks, all of which could easily be eliminated while keeping a progressive tax rate structure in place. 

Despite receiving increased attention after becoming the new GOP presidential frontrunner, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continued his blunder-filled forays into tax policy at the ABC News Iowa Republican primary debate last Saturday.

The most outstanding of the Gingrich tax policy foibles in the debate was a flat-out lie about his past support of a cap-and-trade system to deal with climate change.

Responding to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s charge that he supported cap-and-trade, Gingrich replied “I oppose cap-and-trade” and went on to say that he helped “defeat it in the Senate.” In reality however, Gingrich has said in the past that he would “strongly support” cap-and-trade and has repeatedly backed similar efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Gingrich’s attempt to hide his past position on this issue highlights how anti-tax absolutists have pushed the entire Republican presidential field away from any policy that could increase revenue, even if it would help prevent a climate crisis. Economists agree that a cap and trade system, which would raise revenue, has the same effect as a direct tax on carbon-producing activities. Of course, Gingrich has tried to rewrite history before, and has been called out by CTJ’s director Bob McIntyre.

Gingrich also went on the offensive against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, criticizing Romney’s proposal to make capital gains tax-free only for taxpayers with income under $200,000 whereas Gingrich would make them tax-free for all taxpayers.  

What Gingrich failed to mention is how he would offset the $1.3 trillion revenue loss that would result or that the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers alone would receive three-quarters of the benefits. A fairer and more sustainable tax policy would actually be to end the special low income tax rate for capital gains so that they are treated like any other form of income.

As the new GOP frontrunner, Gingrich will quickly learn that people are paying close attention to his tax policy pronouncements, and CTJ will provide the missing facts whenever needed.

The question from a Tea Party voter was this: “Out of every dollar I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?”

It came during the Fox News and Google Republican presidential candidates debate last Thursday, and was directed at Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.  It was her second crack at the question, so she’d had plenty of time to think it through. And her reply was this: “I think you earned every dollar. You should get to keep every dollar you earn.”

A few sentences later, however, the Congresswoman added, “Obviously, we have to give money back to the government so that we can run the government….”

The anti-tax orthodoxy has become so rigid that candidates like Bachmann, who also chairs the House Tea Party Caucus, must try to reconcile the position that no American should have to pay taxes even when they work for the government who collects those taxes and know perfectly that taxes are required to “run the government.”

Bachmann may have had the most telling (and head-exploding) tax policy moment during the last weekend’s three day series of major Republican presidential candidate events, but she was not alone among the candidates in stumbling over tax issues.

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman faced a tough question from the debate moderator Megyn Kelly who asked, “Is there any scenario under which you could side with the 66 percent of people who believe that it is a good idea to raise taxes on millionaires?” Despite his status as most moderate Republican candidate this season, Huntsman delivered the prefabricated anti-tax response: “This is the worst time to be raising taxes, and everybody knows that.”

Clearly, not “everybody” knows that. As Kelly’s question suggested, 66% of American’s support increasing taxes on the wealthy. Hewing to their anti-tax orthodoxy, Huntsman and the rest of the GOP field find themselves at odds with two thirds of the American public.

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson made his first major GOP debate appearance memorable by using his limited speaking time to call twice for replacing our current income tax system with the, so-called, Fair Tax, which is essentially a 30% national sales tax. As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed in its report on the Fair Tax, the plan is both unworkable and extremely regressive.

Although Gary Johnson is probably the most forthright in his support of the Fair Tax, at least half of the Republican field (and most notably current front-runner Texas Governor Rick Perry) have come out in favor of it. The one exception is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who came out against the Fair Tax in the last debate, noting, quite sensibly and correctly, that it would cut taxes for the rich while increasing them on middle income families.

Former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza Herman Cain had a strong weekend, winning the Florida Straw poll with a surprising 37 percent of the vote. ABC News notes that his success was partially due to his ability to ‘strike a chord’ with his “9-9-9” tax plan, which he also touted proudly during the debate. His plan would replace the entire federal tax system with a 9 percent national sales tax, 9 percent income tax, and 9 percent business flax tax. As we’ve pointed out before, every aspect of this gimmicky and regressive plan would mean higher taxes on lower and middle income families and much lower taxes on the wealthy.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took the debate as an opportunity to – and not for the first time – rewrite fiscal history by claiming that his ‘leadership’ led to four consecutive years of balanced budgets. We’ve said it once, we’ve said it twice, and we’ll say it again: sorry Newt, you never balanced the budget.

Watch this space for reviews of all things tax as the political campaign season kicks into high gear.

As soon as you thought you’d finally had a chance to catch your breath from last week’s Republican debate, the candidates were at it again Monday at CNN’s Tea Party Debate. As you may have to come to expect from anything associated with the Tea Party, the debate was heavy on misinformation about tax policy.
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Here are some of the tax-related highlights and missteps:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney made misleading statements about President Barack Obama’s tax record, claiming that Obama “had raised taxes $500 billion.” What’s deceptive about this is that while Obama raised taxes by $500 billion dollars (mostly through the progressive tax included in the healthcare reform bill), he has simultaneously cut taxes overall by more than double that. Specifically, Obama cut taxes by $243 billion as part of the economic recovery act in 2009, $654 billion as part of the tax compromise he signed at the end of 2010, and is now proposing $240 billion in additional payroll tax cuts, to say nothing of his proposal to continue 81 percent  of the Bush tax cuts and other smaller tax cuts at a cost of an additional $3.5 trillion.

Later in the debate however Romney got it right when asked by a member of the audience if he supported the so-called Fair Tax (a proposed national sales tax). Romney expressed skepticism toward the proposal saying that it would decrease taxes for the “very highest income folks” while increasing taxes for “middle income people.” An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy confirms this point showing that a Fair Tax would primarily benefit the super-wealthy, while increasing the taxes paid by the bottom 80 percent by more than half.

While rejecting the radically regressive Fair Tax may seem like a logical move for any presidential candidate who wants to be taken seriously, Romney is actually bucking at least half of the Republican field (and most notably current front-runner Texas Governor Rick Perry) who have come out in favor of it. 

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann attempted to rewrite fiscal history by claiming that the reason the deficit went “up and up and up” during the past decade was not due to the Bush tax cuts, but rather trillions in increased spending. In reality however, the Bush tax cuts were the primary driver of the deficit during the Bush years, adding some $2.5 trillion to the deficit from 2001-2010.

Bachmann went on to call for a tax repatriation amnesty, making herself the latest of the GOP presidential candidates (joining with Herman Cain and Rick Santorum) to explicitly call for a tax amnesty during the debates. Bachmann and the other candidates all claim the amnesty will create jobs, though in reality it will actually encourage companies to move more jobs and profits offshore.

Former House Speaker Next Gingrich brought up the topic of General Electric’s negative corporate tax rate in attempt to bash Obama’s choice of GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt as an adviser. Gingrich’s goal was to score points by arguing Obama’s choice of Immelt contradicts his own call to close tax loopholes.

Gingrich proceeded to contradict his own argument by saying that he is “cheerfully opposed” to raising taxes by closing the sorts of corporate loopholes that benefit GE and other corporations, while also conveniently leaving out that he actually works as an advisor to GE.

On Wednesday night, the GOP presidential candidates gathered at the Reagan Library for a particularly spirited debate in which candidates repeatedly turned back to tax policy. As with past debates, the GOP candidates attempted to rewrite tax history and reinforce their complete intransience on raising revenue, though there were a few glimmers of moderation.

Here are the highlights:

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, in the most striking moment of the debate, called out the other candidates for signing Grover Norquist’s No-Tax Pledge, saying that he would “love to get everybody to sign a pledge to take no pledges,” noting that taking such pledges “jeopardizes your ability to lead.”

Unfortunately, he followed up this statement by pointing to his record of tax cuts in Utah, which Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) has called this a case study in bad tax policy. Adding to this, Huntsman’s recently released tax plan is regressive and is best characterized as tax loophole consolidation for the rich. He starts with a simplified tax system recommended by the Bowles Simpson commission, then adds huge loopholes for the rich by eliminating taxes on capital gains and stock dividends.

Texas Governor Rick Perry sought to make a name for himself at his first debate appearance by supporting the radical balanced budget amendment (BBA) promoted by Congressional Republicans, calling it a way to “start getting the snake’s head cut off.” Rather than killing some metaphoric government snake however, it is much more likely that a BBA would tie the hands of lawmakers to react to changing economic conditions and force immediate catastrophic cuts to critical government programs like Social Security, food inspection, and housing. Although Perry is one of the BBA’s most outspoken advocates, all of the GOP presidential candidates have voiced their support for it in principle.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann rewrote the legacy of Ronald Reagan in claiming that, like the entirely of the Republican field, Reagan would not embrace a deal involving $10 in spending cuts for every $1 increase in tax revenues. Her reasoning is that Reagan’s own 1982 3-to-1 deficit reduction deal failed because the spending cuts did not fully materialize (which is disputed). Bachmann’s logic break downs, however, when you consider that Reagan did not support increasing taxes just this one time, but actually increased taxes 10 more times after the 1982 deal. If anything, the lesson is that Reagan was more willing to compromise, as shown by his willingness to embrace much less lopsided deals than the candidates today reject outright.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney did reject the claim that 47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes (a popular conservative talking point) when prompted by the moderator. Instead, Romney rightfully noted that every American feels that they are contributing “through the income tax or through other tax vehicles” and that he does not want “to raise taxes on the American people,” presumably even on those on low end who pay very little. 

Americans are, in fact, justified in feeling they contribute to government, and CTJ has provided estimates showing that all Americans pay taxes. Although Romney signaled his intention to not raise taxes on the poor, his recently released economic plan provides insignificant token relief for lower income Americans and heavily favors tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

Former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza Herman Cain was asked a fantastic question by the moderator on whether General Electric’s infamously low tax bill is fair. He answered that “the government needs to get out of the business of trying to figure out who gets a tax break here, who get’s a tax break there.” Though he started off well, Cain then pivoted into promoting his rather ridiculous “9-9-9” plan to replace the entire federal tax system with a 9% national sales tax, 9% income tax, and 9% corporate income tax rate. Needless to say, any plan advocating a national sales tax, a flat tax, and a 75% cut in the corporate income rate would be extremely regressive and almost certainly not raise enough revenue to fund basic government functions.

Former Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich must not have read Bob McIntyre’s piece debunking the former House Speaker’s claims that he balanced the federal budget. Gingrich claimed during the debate that, as Speaker of the House, he “balanced the budget four straight years.” The problem, of course, is that economic growth and the 1993 repeal of the Reagan tax cuts (which every Republican including Gingrich opposed at the time) were what really led to the balanced budgets.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum added his name to the long list of supporters of a repatriation amnesty, noting that such a provision is included in his plan to create jobs. In advocating for a repatriation amnesty, Santorum is following the leadership of the Republican Party and Cain, who has been the proposal’s most vocal proponent during the GOP debates.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul took his anti-government and anti-tax beliefs to their logical extreme in defending a letter he wrote during the Reagan administration informing the President that he was leaving the Republican Party. Whereas the rest of the Republican field admires Reagan without reservation, Paul called Reagan’s fiscal record during the 1980’s “a bad scene,” explaining that Reagan taxed and spent too much, leading to massive deficits. Though it’s absurd to claim Reagan taxed too much, Paul is right to point out that Reagan presided over such massive deficits that by the end of his tenure the national debt had tripled.

Our contempt for Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge is no secret, and it seems that at least one member of Congress is willing to come out and admit he shares the feeling. Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry signed the no-new-taxes pledge in 2004, but now says he regrets the move.

He says, “A while back, I had notified the organization that I had taken that pledge when I ran for office and upheld that my first term in office but realized that this type of pledge can constrain creative policy thinking, so I asked not to be associated with it any longer."

Ouch.  Poor Grover!

Responding to Fortenberry’s snub, a spokesperson from Norquist’s group bristled, “One does not promise to be pro-life for two years, or pro-Second Amendment for one year. One is pro-life, pro-Second Amendment or pro-taxpayer as long as one is in office. Or not.”

This pathological inflexibility defines the pledge mentality and hurts our democracy. It’s chilling that even when legislators abandon the pledge after recognizing it for the ideological straightjacket it is, they are never fully released from it.  Isn’t that how cults work?

Completely taking tax increases off the table is no way to govern.  Pledges thwart the important debates and conversations that make our political system work, the current Washington gridlock offering a case in point. Rep. Fortenberry is setting an example for his GOP colleagues, going so far as to say Warren Buffett might even be right about taxing millionaires.  We’ll see if his stance helps open up our debates.

Pledging to spending cuts as the only budget balancing tool is like agreeing to eat a bowl of spaghetti with only a knife; it doesn’t work and it makes you look foolish.

Photos via Steve Rhodes & Republican Conference via Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

President Barack Obama nominated Alan Krueger to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisors on Monday and he will likely be easily confirmed. Although as a labor economist Krueger has earned many accolades for his robust work, including a seminal article defending the minimum wage, his record on tax policy is a little more mixed.

For example, in recent months Krueger voiced support for a jobs tax credit that would give companies $5,000 for every additional employee they hire. As Citizens for Tax Justice explained when President Obama proposed a similar plan, such tax credits are a poor way to encourage job creation because they inevitably go to companies who would have hired additional employees even without the credits. In fact, those companies that are struggling the most, those shrinking or unable to expand because of weak consumer demand, would receive no help from the credit.

The most controversial position Krueger has taken on tax policy was in a 2009 guest blog post arguing that a national consumption tax (specifically a 5% rate that would raise $500 billion) should be considered as one solution to the long run budget deficit. Many conservatives exaggerated the seriousness of this blog post, failing to mention Krueger’s caveat that this was “only as a suggestion for serious discussion,” and that he was “not sure it is the best way to go.”

In any case, a broad-based national consumption tax is the wrong policy because it would inevitably be severely regressive.

To be sure, Krueger has frequently stood up for good progressive tax policy. For instance, he has laid out the strong case for eliminating billions in tax subsides for oil and gas companies, opposed the ridiculous tax subsidies cities offer to sports teams and is a long time critic of the regressive Bush tax cuts.

As House lawmakers signal their intention to move forward with tax reform this fall, let’s hope we see Krueger in his new position focus on measures that will make our tax system more progressive and better for the overall economy.

Photo via Center for American Progress Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Unless Congress acts, federal gas and diesel taxes will fall by about 80 percent on September 30.  If this is allowed to happen, spending on our nation’s already inadequate roads and transit systems will likely plummet, and Congress will face massive pressure to make up the difference through deficit spending or rerouting spending from other vital priorities.

Clearly, these outcomes are not ideal.  That’s why extending the gas tax – albeit at low rates – has always been a routine and bipartisan undertaking.  Today, however, the visceral opposition to taxes by many in Congress has led some observers to believe that the debate will be more hostile than usual, and that there is a real possibility – though small – that the gas tax will actually be allowed to expire.  Simply put, there is less and less that is “routine” in our nation’s capital anymore.

In a surprising and fortunate twist to this story, Grover Norquist stated flatly recently that a gas tax extension would not violate the no-tax pledge that 277 members of Congress have signed.  This should have already been obvious to anybody who’s taken the time to read Norquist’s 57-word pledge (it clearly applies only to income taxes), but his admission was nonetheless helpful in making that fact known.

Perhaps more surprising, though, was a confession by one of Norquist's employees that allowing the gas tax to fall so quickly would be too disruptive.  You know the situation is serious when even Norquist's group is cautioning against tax cuts.

Less encouraging was Norquist’s recent promise to push for a system in which states could opt-out of the federal Highway Trust Fund, and instead finance their roadways entirely with tax revenues generated inside their borders.  If allowed to happen, this would mark a major retreat from the federal government’s long-running role in helping to maintain our nation’s Interstate highways.

It should go without saying that the Interstate highway system is of immense importance to interstate commerce, and that there is an obvious federal role to be played in ensuring the smooth functioning of that system.  For example, the federal government has always seen to it that large, sparsely populated states are able maintain their expansive highway networks for the good of the national economy.

With this in mind, it should come as little surprise that the organization representing state transportation departments (AASHTO) believes that the federal government's involvement must continue.  As AASHTO representative Jack Basso recently remarked to Stateline, “The real question is can you maintain a national system, given the diversity and the breadth of geography in the country and the population situation, without some kind of national program? I think the answer is ‘No.’”

Unfortunately, while there appears to be a growing consensus that the gas tax should be extended, there's still a possibility that it will be "taken hostage" -- just like the debt ceiling and most of the Bush tax cuts were within the last year.  If that happens, it's very likely that the outcome of the current transportation debate will be much more skewed toward Norquist's priorities than would otherwise be the case.

Photo via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today appointed members to fill the three seats allotted to her for the 12-member “super committee” created under the recent debt deal.

Last December, all three voted against the “compromise” that extended the Bush tax cuts entirely, even for the richest Americans, for two years. All three also received high scores from CTJ’s legislative report card during the previous administration for opposing President George W. Bush’s regressive tax cuts.

Pelosi’s appointees are Xavier Becerra of California, James Clyburn of South Carolina, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

This move by Pelosi provides needed reassurance to advocates of tax fairness. The six Republican members of the super committee have all taken Grover Norquist’s infamous “no new taxes” pledge. The Senate Democrats appointed to the committee have a more mixed record on taxes (see related post.)

Photo via Campus Progress Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The three Democratic Senators appointed by Harry Reid to sit on the “super committee” established under the debt deal voted for the President’s disastrous budget compromise in December of 2010 that extended the Bush tax cuts for another two years.

Sending these three in to negotiate with members who passed an anti-tax litmus test to get there is worrying.

How did the three perform on other tax votes? Senators John Kerry and Patti Murray have a record of voting against costly and regressive tax cuts, while Senator Max Baucus has a mixed record. 

Baucus actually received a failing score on CTJ’s legislative report card during the Bush years because of his support for many regressive tax cuts.  On the other hand, Senator Baucus led the charge in 2010 to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

All three of these Senators deserve credit for voting last year to extend the Bush tax cuts only for those earning below $250,000, which was, at least, better than the Republican proposal to extend the tax cuts entirely.

If these are the Senators charged with holding the line against no-revenue-no-way Republicans, then they’re going to need some reinforcements.  

Lawmakers have made one important decision this week as the debt ceiling negotiations come down to the wire: the wealthy should not have to sacrifice even a dime of their tax cuts or loopholes to reduce the deficit.

Both Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner have proposed plans to cut hundreds of billions in spending on government programs (from food safety to college tuition assistance) in order to raise the debt ceiling, without requiring any revenue be generated through ending tax loopholes or tax cuts for the rich.

Boehner’s plan requires an immediate $1.1 trillion dollars in spending cuts over the next 10 years in order to raise the debt ceiling this year, and would also require that we find another $1.8 trillion in cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling again in 2012.

The proposed spending cuts would place a such a harsh additional burden on lower income families that the usually mild mannered Bob Greenstein, Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, pointed out that Boehner’s plan was “tantamount to a form of ‘class warfare’” and that “it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern US history.”

The new push by both parties for a spending-cuts-only approach stands in great contrast to President Obama’s Monday night address to the nation, which called for a more ‘balanced approach.’

What makes this change in approach even more self defeating is the fact that the anti-tax ideologues have long since lost the public. In fact, well over 19 polls in just the last few months show that the public overwhelmingly favors increasing taxes generally, with larger percentages supporting raising taxes on just the wealthier individuals.

Even after extracting a pound of flesh from Democratic lawmakers, anti-tax forces may still not be satisfied. These groups are pushing for nothing short of passage of the ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,’ hoping to hold the US economy hostage to force through their radical and economically disastrous plan.

The ridiculousness of the absolute anti-tax forces has become especially clear in light of their unwillingness to repeal egregious tax loopholes, such those given to oil and gas companies, hedge fund managers, and many others.

Ironically, the purpose of these extreme cuts is to reduce the ongoing budget deficits, but in fact all of the plans under serious consideration by Democratic and Republican leaders would actually INCREASE the deficit. The problem is that lawmakers simply cannot make up for the outrageous $5.4 trillion cost of extending all of the Bush tax cuts.

Though things are not looking good, hopefully Democratic lawmakers will stand up and not let themselves be blackmailed into accepting ludicrous cuts to spending while large loopholes and tax cuts for the rich remain in place.

Photo via The White House Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

On July 27, Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (H.R. 2669) in the House of Representatives with 53 cosponsors. The Senate version was introduced July 12 by Sen. Carl Levin.

The U.S. Treasury loses an estimated $100 Billion in tax revenues annually due to tax havens. Many believe the actual revenue loss could be much higher.

A key provision would tax corporations where they are located and do business instead of where they are incorporated, say, a post office box in the Cayman Islands. Another important provision would require companies that file with the SEC to report certain financial information on a country-by-country basis so that investors and tax authorities could see where operations are located and where profits are ending up.

Most of the Stop Act provisions are aimed at the foreign financial institutions and foreign jurisdictions that facilitate offshore tax evasion and avoidance. The bill also targets some other types of tax dodging, as well as the bankers, lawyers, and accountants who facilitate these abuses by their clients.

A new report by CTJ explains the bill's provisions.

On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing to consider a national sales tax (often misleadingly called a “Fair Tax” by its proponents) and a value-added tax (VAT).

A national sales tax and a VAT are both consumption taxes and therefore both have the same regressive effect. Poor families have little choice but to spend all of their income on consumption while rich families tend to save most of their income. So a tax on consumption will naturally take a much larger share of income from poor and middle-income families than from rich families.

Proposals to implement a VAT take many forms and are usually discussed as a supplement to existing revenue sources. Proponents of a national sales tax, however, are usually describing a very specific proposal (and a specific bill that is reintroduced each year) misleadingly called a “Fair Tax.”

The so-called “Fair Tax” would replace the federal personal income tax, corporate income tax and estate and gift taxes with a 30 percent sales tax. (Proponents use a convoluted calculation to claim that it’s actually a 23 percent rate.) The tax would apply to all types of consumption, including those that would be difficult or impossible to tax in the real world (like rent, health care services, and, oddly, government spending.)

The proposal includes a rebate to all families that proponents claim mitigates the gross unfairness of the sales tax. The rebate would basically be a cash grant that would vary only by family size.

But as Citizens for Tax Justice and its research wing, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), have long explained, the national sales tax would be extremely regressive. ITEP’s classic report from 2004 illustrates that the poor and middle class would pay much more under a national sales tax (the so-called “Fair Tax”) in every state. (State-by-state figures are included in the report.)

Unfairness is not the only problem. Proponents of a national sales tax vastly understate what the sales tax rate would have to be in order to replace the revenue collected under the current federal tax system. As the ITEP report explains, sales-tax proponents’ convoluted claim that the national sales tax rate would be 23 percent instead of 30 percent is only the beginning of the distortions. To truly raise as much revenue as the current federal tax system, the theoretical rate would have to be between 45 and 53 percent. And because such a high rate would encourage cheating, the real rate would have to be higher still.

Sales-tax advocates sometimes try to make their plan look less regressive by focusing on the taxes people pay over their entire lifetimes. Professor Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University used this technique during his testimony before the Ways and Means Committee to argue that the “Fair Tax” can be progressive! The non-partisan Congressional Research Service notes however that the use these sorts of “highly stylized life cycle models” is actually rather controversial.

Kotlikoff seems to be arguing that because everyone is going to use their income for consumption sooner or later, then a tax on consumption is not inherently any more regressive than a tax on income. A flat 30 percent tax applied to spending, he asserts, would have the same effect as a flat 23 percent tax applied to income over the course of someone’s life. Adding the rebate included in the Fair Tax proposal, Kotlikoff and other proponents claim, makes it progressive.

Here’s why this argument is all wrong. First, rich people don’t eventually use all of their income for consumption but leave a great deal of it to others after they die.

Second, a flat 23 percent tax on income would, of course, be more regressive than our current system, which taxes poor and middle-income people at rates below that and rich people at rates above that.

Third, the rebates included in the Fair Tax would not be enough to offset this regressive impact since the current income tax provides negative taxes for many low-income families.

Other advocates of a national sales tax have made even wilder arguments, like the claim that retail prices will somehow not rise even when the new national sales tax is included in the price, or the claim that the IRS would become unnecessary because states would voluntary collect the tax and remit it to the federal government. (This sounds a lot like the failed Articles of Confederacy, which were replaced by the U.S. Constitution in order to give the federal government the power to raise revenues on its own, rather than relying on voluntary contributions by the states.)

Many of the pro-sales-tax arguments were cogently refuted in testimony given by Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration official. Bartlett has written a great deal about the Fair Tax and its history, starting with the original sales-tax proposal by the Church of Scientology.

Photo via John Beagle & Chasing Fun Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Blue Dog Research Forum asked CTJ for 500 words on whether the U.S. corporate tax code encourages companies to offshore jobs. Our legislative director leapt at the chance to engage with these thoughtful political centrists. His essay, “U.S. Jobs Hurt by Our International Tax Rules, Not Tax Rates” is here, and says, in part:

“Because the U.S. does not tax profits generated offshore (unless the profits are repatriated), corporations can pay less in taxes by moving production to a country with lower corporate income taxes [and] disguise their U.S. profits as “foreign” profits.”

CTJ’s essay appears alongside competing arguments from Senator Mike Enzi, Rep. Loretta Sanchez and conservative think tanker Alan Viard, and is the only one of the four proposing tax reform that’s revenue-positive.

On Tuesday night, the House of Representatives passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act (CCBA), which would cap spending at levels set forth in the Ryan budget and allow an increase in the debt ceiling only after the adoption of a constitutional amendment severely restricting future budget and tax measures.

The balanced budget amendment required as a precondition to the debt ceiling increase would be even more extreme than previous incarnations. It would limit spending to about 16.7 percent of gross domestic product and require a two-thirds majority for any increase in revenue, in addition of course to requiring that government spending equal government revenue.

Although the CCBA passed with 234 votes, the tally signaled that the ultimate adoption of a balanced budget amendment in the House is unlikely. A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be adopted, and that’s 56 more votes than CCBA received.

A less extreme amendment received 300 votes in 1995.

Fortunately, the CCBA faces “stiff opposition” in the Senate, where it is unlikely to pass at all. (Update: The CCBA was defeated in the Senate a 51-46 vote.)

President Obama has threatened to veto the CCBA if it passes the Senate and labeled the measure an attempt to “duck, dodge, and dismantle.” Nine of the Republican presidential candidates, including current frontrunner Mitt Romney, support the CCBA.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has blasted the balanced budget amendment called for by the CCBA, noting how it would tie the hands of lawmakers to react to changing economic conditions. Five Nobel Laureate economists voiced their opposition to the amendment in a letter to the President and Congress.

The radical spending cap provision would force draconian cuts to essential government programs like Medicare and Social Security, which main stream economists believe would reduce consumer demand and make it far more difficult to create jobs. The amendment would require nearly $9 trillion in cuts over 10 years, which goes well beyond the extreme measures of the infamous Ryan budget.

The proposed amendment would be so damaging that over 240 national organizations have come together to oppose it.

Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page, well known for its extremism and willingness to disregard the facts to support spending and tax cuts, opposes the BBA. The paper notes that not even Ronald Reagan’s policies would have passed muster under the radically stringent amendment.

Former Republican Senator Judd Gregg summed up the debate over the CCBA perfectly, writing, “Lord save us from the well intentioned and those who are trying to score political points or raise money” by pursing this form of “conservative misdirection.”

Photo via Speaker Boehner Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

On Wednesday, May 25, Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered comments on the Senate floor about the budget, the deficit and why he rejects the House budget plan from Rep. Paul Ryan.

Senator Conrad cited new figures from Citizens for Tax Justice showing that taxpayers with income exceeding a million dollars would enjoy an average tax cut of at least $192,500 in 2013 if Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan was enacted. Taxpayers with income exceeding $10 million in 2013 would get an average tax cut of at least $1,450,650 under the Ryan plan.

Conrad explains the obvious math that a deficit problem isn't solved by reducing revenues, and that it especially makes no sense to reduce revenues by cutting taxes for the super rich. His graphic illustrates the analysis CTJ provided. The Senate ulitmately voted against the House plan 57-40.

Watch Senator Conrad's remarks below: