BACKWARDS BOEHNER

House Minority Leader Says that Loophole-Closing Provisions in Jobs Bill Would Push Jobs Offshore — When the Exact Opposite Is True

Speaking before business leaders in Cleveland on Tuesday, House Republican Leader John Boehner proposed a five-point "plan" to help the economy that mainly consisted of continuing George W. Bush's tax and spending policies, not enacting any new reforms, and firing the President Obama's economic advisers. He also claimed that deviating from the Bush tax policies would hurt small businesses, which has already been refuted by CTJ and other experts.

Near the beginning of his speech, Boehner said that the $26 billion jobs bill recently enacted, H.R. 1586, "is funded by a new tax hike that makes it more expensive to create jobs in the United States and less expensive to create jobs overseas."

That is literally the opposite of what the tax provisions in H.R 1586 do. The provisions in this jobs bill close existing loopholes that, to use Mr. Boehner's words, "make it more expensive to create jobs in the United States and less expensive to create jobs overseas."

In fact, these loopholes can result in U.S. corporations enjoying a negative effective tax rate on their offshore investment income. This creates a strong incentive for U.S. corporations to shift profits offshore, either through accounting gimmicks or by moving actual operations and jobs offshore.

The Foreign Tax Credit

The loopholes that were shut down relate to the foreign tax credit, which U.S. taxpayers take against their U.S. taxes for any foreign taxes they pay. The idea is that if an American earns some income in, say, the U.K. and pays taxes to the U.K. on that income, he or she should not have to pay all of the applicable U.S. taxes on that income also. In other words, the foreign tax credit is meant to avoid double-taxation of Americans' foreign income. U.S. corporations use the foreign tax credit for income they generate abroad, but the problem is that many have found ways to take foreign tax credits in excess of what they need to avoid double-taxation.

For example, U.S. corporations don't even have to pay U.S. taxes on any of their foreign income until they bring that income back to the U.S. (until they "repatriate" that income), which in many cases they never will. But many have found ways to take foreign tax credits on this foreign income — even though it's not even taxed in the U.S. Obviously, this has nothing to do with avoiding double-taxation.

This means the foreign tax credits are being used to reduce the corporations' U.S. taxes on its U.S. income. The corporations are taking more foreign tax credits than they even need to wipe out their U.S. taxes on that foreign income. This also means the offshore profits are effectively subject to a negative rate of taxation in the U.S.

It's hard to imagine a stronger incentive to shift investments — and in some cases, actual jobs — offshore. This incentive to shift investments offshore has been greatly reduced by H.R. 1586, the law Boehner criticizes.

Predictably, business associations representing multinational corporations oppose the provisions to prevent these abuses. A previous report from CTJ addressed their arguments, one of which focused on the provisions' supposed retroactivity (which is addressed by the version of the provisions in H.R. 1586). Another of the multinational corporate community's arguments was that the practices in question are necessary to keep U.S. corporations abroad competitive with foreign companies, which seems like an admission that the foreign tax credit is being used for more than just preventing double-taxation.

The corporate community has been remarkably effective at confusing everyone about this issue, partly because so few people understand it. Even the Peter G. Peterson Institute, named after and funded by the man who has become famous for lecturing America on budget deficits, issued a report opposed to the provisions that close these loopholes in the foreign tax credit. (See CTJ's response to the Peterson Institute.)

The Jobs Bill, H.R. 1586

The law that Congressman Boehner is criticizing, H.R. 1586, the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act, provides $26 billion to states to continue funding Medicaid programs and to avoid teacher layoffs. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that aid to states is one of the most effective measures to create jobs. (The income tax cuts that Boehner endorses, particularly income tax cuts for the rich, are the least effective measures for creating jobs, according to CBO's findings.)

Since the bill included the most effective possible job creation measures and offset the costs by closing tax loopholes that encourage U.S. corporations to shift profits and jobs offshore, it's about as close as Congress ever comes to a win-win proposal. We're glad that President Obama has signed it into law.

With Congress out of Washington for the August recess, more and more reporters and opinion makers are turning their attention to the enormous decisions on tax policy that await lawmakers when they return.

Anti-Tax Lawmakers Ignoring Public Opinion

The public supports President Obama's approach to the Bush tax cuts. A new CNN poll finds that only 31 percent of respondents think that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for the very rich as well as everyone else. This is in keeping with previous polls with similar results.

The main justification given by anti-tax lawmakers and activists for ignoring public opinion on this matter is that higher taxes on the rich, they claim, will hurt business investment and therefore hurt job creation. But a growing chorus of analysts agree that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the rich will not harm the economy.

Anti-Tax Lawmakers Ignoring Rational, Informed Economic Analysis

For example, Allan Sloan, senior editor for Fortune and a columnist for the Washington Post, writes that "From the start of the income tax through 2003, dividends were taxed as regular income, and capital gains were treated far less favorably than now. Somehow both the republic and the financial markets survived. They'll survive higher rates, too."

Sloan provides a refreshingly calm approach to a subject that sends many people into hysterics: the impact of taxes on investment.

For example, he points out that the 2003 tax cut bill signed by President Bush "set dividend taxes for the high-bracket crowd at preferential rates for the first time and brought the rate on long-term capital gains to its lowest point since 1941, according to the tax publishing firm CCH. But that didn't exactly result in a bull market. According to Wilshire Associates, whose numbers I'm using throughout this column, the U.S. stock market rose only 14.6 percent from the May 5, 2003, tax cut through Obama's election on Nov. 4, 2008... That price gain, about 2.5 percent a year compounded, was less than half the historical rate."

In Sloan's view, the ups and downs of the stock market have little if anything to do with tax rates. He goes on to say, "Since Obama's election, the market has been very good. In fact, the market's 10.4 percent rise during Obama's first 100 days in office bested tax-cutting Ronald Reagan (a 4 percent gain for his first 100 days) and George W. Bush (a 2.3 percent loss for the equivalent period)."

Higher taxes on the very rich will not reduce their investment in stocks and bonds and also will not reduce their investments in their own businesses that they actively operate (as we have explained elsewhere).

When it comes to job creation, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office agrees that the other measures that have been discussed in Congress (like aid to state and local governments and extended unemployment benefits) are many times more effective than income tax cuts for the rich.

On Thursday, Senate offices received a letter calling for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the rich from Americans for Responsible Taxes, and coalition of non-profits, labor unions, faith-based groups and think-tanks. The letter was signed by 50 organizations including Citizens for Tax Justice.

President Obama pledged to allow the Bush income tax cuts to expire for the two percent of taxpayers who have adjusted gross income in excess of $250,000 ($200,000 for unmarried taxpayers). Democratic leaders in the Senate have indicated that they want to vote in September to extend the Bush income tax cuts for everyone else (the other 98 percent of taxpayers). Many Republican Senators are expected to oppose any bill to extend the income tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers because they will demand that they be extended for the richest two percent as well.

A few Senate Democrats have indicated that they would support extending the income tax cuts even for the rich for some period of time, but it is unclear whether they would go so far as to vote against any bill that extends the tax cuts for "only" 98 percent of taxpayers. Because of the bizarre Senate practice of requiring 60 votes to enact any legislation, it is conceivable that the Republicans would be able to block an extension of the income tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers over their opposition to allowing tax cuts to expire for the richest two percent.

The letter from Americans for Responsible Taxes points out that public opinion and the opinion of economists and analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and elsewhere are firmly in favor of allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire. CBO analyzed several policy options to create jobs and found that income tax cuts generally would be the least effective, and that income tax cuts for the rich would be particularly ineffective.

Technically, the approach being discussed by President Obama and the Democrats would extend the reductions in income tax rates for all but the top two income tax brackets. Those top two brackets would be adjusted so that no one with AGI below $250,000 ($200,000 for unmarried taxpayers) would fall within them. Limits on personal exemptions and itemized deductions would also come back into effect for taxpayers above the $200,000/$250,000 threshold.

The letter also points out that even the richest two percent of taxpayers (those who would be affected by the top two income tax rates) would benefit from the extended rate reductions in the lower brackets, so even the richest two percent would not entirely lose their income tax cuts.

The main Republican talking point to justify extending the income tax cuts for the richest two percent appears to be that any other approach will harm small businesses. However, reports from Citizens for Tax Justice, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the CBO analysis mentioned above, all explain why income tax cuts for the rich would not help small businesses to expand and create jobs.

After a schedule packed with recovery measures, health care, financial reform and job creation, members of Congress are finally turning their attention to the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year. President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress propose to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest two percent of taxpayers, those who make over $250,000 a year (over $200,000 for unmarried taxpayers).

Rumors are flying that Republicans would block such legislation — meaning they would block tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers — because they oppose allowing them to expire for the richest two percent. That will have interesting consequences, given that a large majority of Americans think that the Bush tax cuts should expire at least for those who make over $250,000 a year.

Previously released figures from Citizens for Tax Justice show that the Republicans' approach to the Bush tax cuts would result in a $54,000 break, on average, for the richest one percent of taxpayers. (State-by-state figures are also included).

A new op-ed written by CTJ and appearing in several papers today explains that the very Senators who have blocked relatively small job creation measures (which economists agree are more effective than tax cuts) are the same Senators who want to increase the deficit by a trillion dollars in order to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Read the op-ed.

On July 14, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief economic adviser for John McCain’s presidential campaign and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave written and oral testimony to the Senate Finance Committee concerning the Bush tax cuts. Because these tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, Congress must decide which portions of them to extend or make permanent, and which portions should expire as scheduled.

Holtz-Eakin argued for permanently extending the Bush income tax cuts for the rich, while dropping expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Credit that benefit working class people. He also oddly asserted that raising revenue will not reduce deficits. He went on to repeat some common misconceptions about businesses and their reaction to tax rates.

The overall thrust of Holtz-Eakin’s testimony was that taxes need to be lower on the rich (to encourage them to work, save and invest) and higher on the poor (to encourage them to work).

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains that, to make his case, Holtz-Eakin endorsed several myths about the Bush tax cuts.

Read the report.

A Washington Post editorial earlier this week declared, "Senate Republicans, committed as they are to preventing the debt from mounting further, can't approve an extension of unemployment benefits because it would cost $35 billion. But they are untroubled by the notion of digging the hole $678 billion deeper by extending President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."

Well, that's a little unfair, because Congressional Republicans actually want to increase the deficit by a full trillion dollars by extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

The $678 billion is just the cost of making the Bush income tax cuts for the richest two percent of taxpayers permanent. (President Obama and Republicans agree that they should be made permanent for the other 98 percent.) Republicans have also been pushing for years to make permanent Bush's repeal of the federal tax on the estates of millionaires. This would add over $300 billion during the first decade when its costs would be fully felt, compared to Obama's more restrained (but still awfully generous) proposal to cut the estate tax.

As the Post explains, Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl recently said that the cost of new spending should be offset, but the revenue loss from tax cuts should not. According to Talking Points Memo, Republican Senator Judd Gregg explained that new government spending is "growing the government" and therefore should be offset, presumably with cuts in spending, but tax cuts should not be offset.

Of course, deficit-financed tax cuts have to be paid for one day, and that could be done through tax hikes. Congressional Republicans might believe that Congress will be forced to shrink government when revenues decline, but that obviously didn't happen after the Bush tax cuts were enacted.

Senate Republicans Bring Back Supply-Side Economics

But the real prize for articulating their position goes to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. When asked about this, he replied, "That's been the majority Republican view for some time, that there's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy."

That's right. The most powerful Republican alive believes that when Congress cuts taxes, the result is that revenues increase.

This is the extreme version of "supply-side economics." The basic idea behind this school of thought is that tax cuts can change incentives to invest so much that they result in huge economic growth, which results in increased incomes and therefore increased income tax payments that more than make up for the loss of tax revenue resulting directly from the tax cuts.

CTJ has already explored in great detail the empirical evidence against this idea, the people who promote it anyway, and the fiscal disasters that have resulted.

But don't take our word for it. President George W. Bush's own Treasury also concluded that tax cuts do not increase revenue or come close to paying for themselves.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin Contradicts McConnell

So have the Republicans obtained some new support for supply-side economics since then? Apparently not, since the Republican witness at Wednesday's Finance Committee hearing on the Bush tax cuts conceded that they did not pay for themselves.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an adviser to the presidential campaign of John McCain testified at the hearing in favor of making permanent all the Bush tax cuts (including those for the richest taxpayers). According to his written testimony (which he paraphrased during the hearing), making the tax cuts permanent would have a positive economic effect that would reduce the direct cost of the tax cuts by 22 percent.

We have no idea how he came to that figure. But Holtz-Eakin is the closest thing the Republicans have to a reasonable and credible economist who will promote their views. (Even though we think he's wrong about most of what he says, as we explained in the previous article.) Since Holtz-Eakin is the best economist the Republicans have on their side, one would think that Senator McConnell would get on the same page.

Read the report.

As Congress prepares to take up legislation to boost small business job creation in the following weeks, some lawmakers argue that the legislation must extend parts of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the very rich.

Two ideas along these lines are being discussed. One is to extend income tax reductions for the very rich, at least for taxpayers who can be somehow classified as “small business” taxpayers. The second is to eliminate most of the federal tax on the estates of millionaires. As the new CTJ report explains, both of these proposals would allow the rich to continue to enjoy most of the tax cuts they received under President Bush while doing nothing to create or protect jobs.

Extending income tax cuts for small business owners is unlikely to boost job creation because:

— President Obama has already pledged to extend the Bush income tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers. Only 3 to 5 percent of small business owners are wealthy enough to lose some of their tax cuts under President Obama’s proposal.

— Hiring decisions are generally not based on federal income taxes, but are based on whether or not there is demand for the goods or services that a business provides.

— Economists and analysts, including those at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, have concluded that extending income tax cuts would be the least effective of several policy options to create jobs.

— Enacting a “carve-out” or special break for “small businesses” would simply encourage all rich taxpayers to disguise their income as “small business” income.

Cutting the estate tax is also unlikely to boost job creation because:

— An even smaller percentage of small businesses would be affected by the federal estate tax under President Obama’s proposal.

— Those few small businesses affected by the estate tax already enjoy special breaks that make it more manageable for closely held businesses and farms.

— It is very unlikely that the estate tax causes millionaires (the only people affected by it) to work less or invest less and therefore create fewer jobs. If anything, the estate tax could have the opposite effect.

Read the report.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explores the tax proposals included in the federal budget outline that President Obama submitted to Congress on February 1. Like the budget he submitted last year, it is a vast improvement over the policies of the Bush years and continues to outline a progressive reform agenda.

But, also similar to last year, the President’s budget could be greatly improved with more aggressive policies to raise revenue. Over the coming decade, the President proposes to cut taxes by $3.5 trillion. We include in this figure the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) as well as additional tax cuts that President Obama proposes.

His budget would offset a portion of this cost with provisions that would raise $760 billion over a decade by limiting the benefits of itemized deductions for the wealthy, reforming the U.S. international tax system and enacting other reforms and loophole-closing measures.

The report concludes that the federal government should collect at least as much revenue as the President proposes in order to avoid larger budget deficits. There are two bare minimum requirements for Congress to achieve this. First, Congress must not extend any more of the Bush tax cuts than President Obama proposes to extend. Second, Congress must raise at least as much revenue as President Obama has proposed ($760 billion over ten years) through loophole-closers and new revenue measures.

Read the full report.

"From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument -– that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.  The problem is that's what we did for eight years."  (Applause.)  "That's what helped us into this crisis.  It's what helped lead to these deficits.  We can't do it again."

President Obama spoke these words in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, after pledging to enact an agenda that will create jobs and tackle our long-term budget deficit. He did a good job of explaining that the budget deficits that exist today are the result of deficit-financed tax cuts, two deficit-financed wars, and a major recession all occurring before he entered the White House.

But one has to wonder if President Obama is gently bearing left at a time when any sensible directions would call for a sharp left turn.

The Bush Tax Cuts

He remains committed to extending the Bush income tax cuts for the 98 percent of taxpayers who have adjusted gross income (AGI) below $250,000 (or below $200,000 for an unmarried taxpayer). The budget document released by the administration last year showed, in a convoluted way, that this would cost $1.88 trillion between now and 2019. His proposal to partially extend the Bush cut in the estate tax (making permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009) would cost another $576 billion over the same period, for a total of about $2.45 trillion.

The estimated costs of these proposals may be different in the budget to be released next week (since all the projections change at least somewhat in response to developments in the economy). But make no mistake, the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts far exceeds the savings the President hopes to achieve with his proposed spending freeze (which will actually cut spending if one accounts for inflation and other factors).

Cutting Non-Security Discretionary Programs

The administration is reported to believe $250 billion can be saved from the spending freeze, which would last three years but would not apply to national security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. The first problem is that these exempt categories of spending, along with interest payments on the national debt that cannot be avoided, make up 70 percent of the federal budget. Americans love to complain about wasteful government spending, but few realize that, once you eliminate those categories of spending that are very popular with the public, there's not a whole lot left to cut. The non-security discretionary spending that is left has come under increasing pressure in recent years since it's the only part of the budget lawmakers feel comfortable attacking.

The second problem is that cutting back spending when the economy may still be weak could prolong our downturn. Progressive observers have warned that the Roosevelt administration's decision to stop stimulating the economy and focus on deficit-reduction plunged the country back into a deeper depression in 1937.

For their part, administration officials have explained that they are not proposing an across-the-board freeze. Rather, they will identify particular types of spending that represent wasteful giveaways to special interests rather than public services that people depend upon.

Even if that's true (and the jury is still out on that), it's still peculiar that taxes aren't getting more attention. This is the third problem with the President's approach. The need for higher taxes is like an 800 pound elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore, even if they vaguely acknowledge that Bush's tax cuts got us into this mess. Does a family with an income of $190,000 really need every cent of their Bush tax cuts? Do families with $7 million in assets really need to be fully exempt from the estate tax? The President's tax proposals would have us believe so.

Steps in the Right Direction

The President certainly wants to move in the right direction, as was evident in various parts of his speech. He reiterated his proposal to charge a fee on risk-taking by the largest banks, which would raise $90 billion over a decade according to the administration. We've argued before that this is entirely reasonable. The institutions affected know they have an implicit guarantee from the government and are prone to put the entire economy at risk as a result. It makes sense to demand that they pay up in proportion to their risk-taking.

The President also reaffirmed his desire to do something about offshore profit-shifting by corporations. The proposals he made last year along these lines would raise $200 billion over a decade and would be extremely important, as we have explained in detail, in preventing U.S. corporations from shifting their profits to other countries.

Sometimes this shifting means companies actually move jobs and operations offshore, but other times it involves accounting gimmicks and transactions that exist only on paper. Either way, Americans lose tax revenue for no good reason other than that Congress is afraid to take on the lobbying power of multinational corporations.

America has a budget problem that is long-term in nature. The money we spend this year or next year to stimulate the economy has little impact on the long-term deficit. Reforming our tax system permanently, however, is an important part of the long-term solution.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) and other groups representing the real estate industry have been a case study in special interest politics for some time. A quick glance a the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation's tax expenditure report reveals that tax breaks related to housing cost over $100 billion a year, but that's not enough to satisfy NAR and its followers.

The Battles Over the "Carried Interest" Loophole

Two years ago, the Real Estate Roundtable (of which NAR is a member) hired Douglas Holtz-Eakin to defend the "carried interest" loophole, which basically allows those investing other people's money to pretend that they put up their own money, thus entitling them to pay taxes at the low capital gains rate of 15 percent rather than the regular rate of 35 percent that other highly compensated workers pay. (CTJ released a fact sheet debunking Holtz-Eakin's arguments.) The Obama administration continues to support closing the carried interest loophole.

The Homebuyer's Credit

In the last year of the Bush administration, the real estate industry managed to get Congress to adopt, as part of the economic stimulus law enacted in 2008, a $7,500 homebuyer credit that taxpayers would have to pay back to the IRS. This, year, they persuaded Congress to upgrade that to a $8,000 homebuyer credit that does not have to be paid back and that is available to taxpayers under certain income limits if they purchase a home before the end of November of this year.  

The homebuyer tax credit was estimated at the time of enactment to have a cost of $6.6 billion, but is actually on track to cost more than twice that.

Since the economic crisis was caused by inflated home prices, it is not at all clear how subsidies provided through the tax code to boost home prices could possibly be good policy. 

Ted Gayer at the Brookings Institution has written that:

"The tax credit is very poorly targeted. Approximately 1.9 million buyers are expected to receive the credit, but more than 85 percent of these would have bought a home without the credit. This suggests a price tag of about $15 billion – which is twice what Congress intended – for approximately 350,000 additional home sales. At $43,000 per new home sale, this is a very expensive subsidy."

Perhaps most alarming is the possibility that the homebuyer credit could become another "tax extender," the term used by Congressional staff and lobbyists to describe tax breaks that are ostensibly in effect for only a year or two, but which everyone believes Congress will extend again and again. NAR is, of course, pushing for Congress to extend the homebuyer credit.

Health Care

Perhaps the worst example of special interests fighting to block the common good is the real estate industry's interference in Congress's attempts to reform health care. Early this year, the Obama administration proposed to limit the value of itemized deductions for wealthy taxpayers to 28 percent as a way to raise revenue that would partially fund health care reform. CTJ found that this would affect only the richest 1.3 percent of taxpayers and would merely reduce some of the unfairness that occurs when Congress subsidizes certain activities (like home ownership and charitable giving) through the tax code. NAR, naturally, would have none of it, since this proposal would curtail the savings received by high-income taxpayers when they claim the itemized deduction for home mortgage interest.

In fact, NAR recently has come out against a much more scaled back version of this proposal, which would merely cap itemized deductions at 35 percent.

Currently, the top income tax rate is 35 percent, so the richest Americans can save, at most, 35 cents for each dollar of itemized deductions they claim. But the Bush tax cuts, which lowered the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, will expire at the end of 2010. That means that in 2011, under current law, each dollar of itemized deductions claimed by a very wealthy person could result in almost 40 cents of savings. Capping itemized deductions at 35 percent would therefore merely freeze in place their current value after the Bush tax cuts expire and rates go back up.

NAR recently issued a statement saying that it opposes even this scaled back proposal to limit itemized deductions and that it "rejects in the strongest possible terms any proposal that would limit the deductions for mortgage interest and real property taxes." NAR is unabashed in its defense of subsidies provided through the tax code for families in the top income tax bracket.

Do the Realtors Oppose the Bush Tax Cuts?

But if the realtors believe that the very rich should receive 39.6 cents for each dollar of itemized deductions they claim, that seems to imply that they think the top income tax rate should revert back to the pre-Bush level of 39.6 percent. Their position seems to be that it is unacceptable for the richest Americans to only save 35 cents for each dollar they claim in itemized deductions. The only way for that number to go back up from 35 to 39.6 is for President Bush's reduction in the top rate to expire. Surprisingly, NAR and CTJ seem to have one position in common, albeit for vastly different reasons.

The Bush Tax Cuts for the Richest Five Percent Cost More than the President's Health Care Proposal

During his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night to explain his health care proposal, President Barack Obama noted that his plan would cost less than the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, a fact demonstrated in a report released earlier this week by Citizens for Tax Justice.

"Add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years - less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration."

President Barack Obama, Address to Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009

A recent report from Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the Bush tax cuts cost almost $2.5 trillion over the decade after they were first enacted (2001-2010). Preliminary estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that the House Democrats' health care reform legislation is projected to cost $1 trillion over the decade after it would be enacted (2010-2019). President Obama said during his address to Congress that his health care plan would cost a little less than the House plan, at "around $900 billion over ten years."

As the President said, even the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest few" cost more than his health care plan. The direct cost of the tax cuts for just the richest five percent of taxpayers over the 2001-2010 period is $979 billion. (The cost is even greater if one includes interest payments that resulted because the Bush tax cuts were deficit-financed.) In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in completely, an incredible 52.5 percent of them will go to this wealthiest five percent of taxpayers.

Oddly, many of the lawmakers who claim to be concerned about the cost of the President's health care plan are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts, despite their much greater costs.

Read the new report from Citizens for Tax Justice.
 
These figures make clear that costs cannot be the real concern of lawmakers who oppose health care reform and yet supported the Bush tax cuts. Their position seems to be that showering benefits on the wealthiest five percent of taxpayers and leaving the bill for future generations is preferable to making health care available for all at a much lower cost and paying that cost up front. That demonstrates a different set of priorities than most Americans have, but it doesn't demonstrate much concern about costs.

Approval Marks a Major Step Towards Enacting President's Agenda

On Wednesday, both the House and Senate approved a Congressional budget resolution for fiscal year 2010 that paves the way for several of the President's major initiatives. The resolution allows Congress to make new investments in education and clean energy and puts in place procedures that will make it easier for Congress to enact comprehensive health care reform. It also allows Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest Americans.

The budget resolution allows for about $3.5 trillion in federal spending in fiscal year 2010 and includes important tax and spending provisions related to years after that. It is not a law and is not binding, but puts in place caps on the spending that Congress appropriates each year, sets targets for tax and spending changes and includes certain procedural changes that make it more likely Congress will meet these goals.

Tax Cuts Extended for All but the Rich

For example, the budget resolution allows Congress to reduce revenues by a certain amount by extending the Bush income tax cuts. It is understood that the amount of revenue-reduction allowed would be sufficient to extend the Bush tax cuts for those with incomes below $250,000. It also allows for Congress to reduce revenues by preventing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) from expanding as it is scheduled to under current law. Similarly, it allows Congress to extend the estate tax rules in effect in 2009 instead of allowing the estate tax to revert to the rules put in place during the Clinton years, before Bush's cuts in the estate tax were enacted.

The resolution allows for Congress to enact these tax cuts without finding new revenue to pay for them -- on one condition, which is that Congress enacts a statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rule that will (in theory) prevent Congress from enacting any more legislation that will increase the deficit. That means that any additional tax cuts (say, an extension of the Making Work Pay Credit that was enacted for two years as part of the economic stimulus package) would have to be combined with revenue-raising provisions to offset the costs.

Predictably, allies of former President George W. Bush have expressed horror that Democratic leaders and President Obama wish to extend the Bush tax cuts for 97.5 percent of Americans rather than 100 percent. The Democrats and the President would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for singles with incomes over $200,000 and married couples with incomes over $250,000 (which make up roughly the richest 2.5 percent of taxpayers).

For their part, House Republicans used the budget debate to demonstrate to the public just how lopsided the tax code would be if their goals were ever realized and just how much government would have to shrink because of the revenue losses that would result. Earlier this month, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee presented his tax and spending plan which would cut and privatize Medicare, convert Medicaid into limited block grants to states, repeal the recently enacted economic stimulus law and deeply cut the relatively small amount of government spending devoted to non-military, non-mandatory programs.

Citizens for Tax Justice published a report concluding that under this GOP plan, over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010, while the richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average.

Final Budget Leaves Out the Senate's Outrageous Estate Tax Cut

Progressives scored a victory when Democratic leaders agreed to exclude from the final budget an amendment adopted by the Senate during its budget debate on April 2 which would slash the estate tax to benefit multi-millionaires. Before the Senate approved this amendment, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "It is so stunning, so outrageous that some would choose this hour of national crisis to push for an amendment to slash the estate tax for the super wealthy." His common sense view carried the day as negotiators hammered out the final resolution.

The tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2001 scheduled a gradual repeal of the estate tax, with the amount of assets exempted from the tax gradually increasing over a decade and the tax rate on estates gradually dropping until the estate tax would disappear entirely in 2010. Like almost all of the Bush tax cuts, this cut in the estate tax expires at the end of 2010, meaning that rules scheduled under President Clinton would come back into effect in 2011.

The budget resolutions passed out of the House and Senate budget committees in March both assumed that the estate tax rules in place in 2009 would be made permanent, meaning the Bush estate tax cut would be partially made permanent but the estate tax would not disappear entirely in 2010. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report finding that about 99.7 percent of estates would be untouched by the tax under this proposal.

Incredibly, 51 Senators voted in favor of the amendment offered by Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to cut the estate tax even more than this. The 2009 estate tax rules exempt the first $7 million of assets passed on by a married couple (as well as assets they leave to charity) and tax the rest at a rate of 45 percent. The Kyl-Lincoln amendment called for a $10 million exemption for married couples and a 35 percent rate.

Taking Steps Towards Enacting the President's Priorities

Progressives scored another victory in the area of health care. House and Senate leaders decided to include in the final budget resolution a mechanism known as "reconciliation" which will allow the Senate to enact health care reform and higher education loan changes with a simple majority vote.

The practice of filibustering legislation in the Senate has, over the years, turned into a default rule that three fifths the Senate's members must agree to pass a bill. This means that legislation supported by Senators representing a majority of Americans is often blocked. Many advocates fear that this is exactly what could happen to health care reform and many other of the President's important initiatives.

Reconciliation is a way around this obstacle. A budget resolution can include reconciliation instructions specifying that committees will pass legislation that can then pass the full House and Senate under a streamlined process. In the Senate, that streamlined process means that the bill can be passed with just 51 votes.

The particular version of reconciliation included in this budget is optional, meaning Democratic leaders will resort to using it only if bipartisan consensus proves elusive.

Several Republican Senators, and some Democratic Senators, have taken the view that majority rule is undemocratic, and have called reconciliation a partisan ploy to "ram through" the President's agenda. (The idea of the Senate moving too quickly is a little hard for any Hill observer to understand.) More importantly, enacting health care reform will require Congress to raise a great deal of revenue, and finding a large bipartisan majority for that might be a challenge.

Finally, some have complained that reconciliation is only to be used for deficit-reduction, but this is entirely unconvincing because these are largely the same members who voted in favor of reconciliation bills during the Bush years that actually increased the deficit by cutting taxes.

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

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

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

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

Read the fact sheet.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice answers many of the questions that are frequently asked about taxes during this time of year and clears up the old myths that are still accepted by many as fact. Here is just a sample of some of the questions that are answered:

Question: Does President Obama plan on raising our taxes?

Question: There might be cyclical downturns and upturns in the economy that no one can control, but don't tax cuts help us climb out of downturns a little faster?

Question: What are "tax havens" and why are some people in an uproar over them?

Question: What does it matter to me if someone else is hiding their income from the IRS?

Read the report.

As we approach April 15th, one complaint we often hear is that Americans who work hard and become successful have to pay over a third of their income in federal income taxes. But a recent report from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that this is not remotely true.

As a new CTJ fact sheet explains, the IRS data show that the federal income tax rates paid by the highest-income Americans have dropped substantially since 2000, largely due to cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends pushed through by the Bush Administration. While income from work (salaries and wages) is subject to rates as high as 35 percent, income from investments (long-term capital gains and stock dividends) is taxed at only 15 percent.

The IRS report shows that in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available), the 400 richest income tax filers paid just 17.2 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI) in federal income taxes. That is down from 22.3 percent in 2000, and is less than half of the top statutory income tax rate of 35 percent.

Read the CTJ fact sheet.