Tax policy is an area in which two people can look at the exact same set of facts and come to exactly opposite conclusions. Take the American Enterprise Institute's latest assault on the Medicare tax reform that President Obama has included in his health care reform plan.
The President has adopted an idea that CTJ has championed for months, to change the Medicare tax so that it no longer exempts investment income and to make the tax more progressive. The President would raise the Medicare tax rate for earnings exceeding $200,000 for unmarried taxpayers and $250,000 for married taxpayers, and he would apply the existing 2.9 percent Medicare tax to investment income for those with adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200,000/$250,000.
CTJ's recent report on this proposal found that only 2.3 percent of taxpayers would be affected by this tax in 2014. (The tax would go into effect in 2013).
But that's no comfort to Alan D. Viard and Amy Roden, who argue against this tax reform in AEI's online journal. They write:
"Of course, the high-income cutoffs mean that the new Medicare tax wouldn’t apply to most American savers. But the savers hit by the tax are precisely the ones who provide the largest volume of funds to finance investment in our economy. In 2007, tax returns from households with incomes greater than $200,000 reported 47 percent of all interest income, 60 percent of all dividends, and a staggering 84 percent of all net capital gains. We can’t afford to discourage this group from investing in America’s future."
So they fully agree with us that the sort of income they don't want Congress to tax predominately flows to the rich.
As a judge would say, the facts in this case are not in dispute.
What is in dispute is whether we have to avoid taxing the types of income that mostly flow to the wealthy in order to keep our economy running smoothly. AEI says yes, we need to have preferential rates in some taxes for these types of incomes (like the capital gains and dividends break in the income tax) and wholesale exemptions in other taxes (like the Medicare tax).
We disagree. We have seen no evidence that the economy functions better when taxes on investment income are slashed or eliminated. Even when it comes to capital gains, which is where libertarians think they have their strongest case, there is no evidence that tax cuts have enhanced economic efficiency. Capital gains income certainly has fluctuated as a result of the ups and downs in the overall economy, and libertarians often attribute the upswings to tax cuts for capital gains. Sadly for them, capital gains realizations have, throughout the Bush years and today, been lower than they were at the end of the Clinton years, when the top rate for capital gains was higher.
Taxing investment income the same way that income from work is taxed is only fair. The President's Medicare tax reform is a step in the right direction. It would end the current exemption in the Medicare tax for investment income to help finance a health care reform that really will help our economy to function more efficiently.
Recent News about Tax Giveaways for Investors (Capital Gains Breaks, Etc.)
The Senate approved a bill Wednesday that includes an extension of unemployment benefits and COBRA health benefits for unemployed workers through the end of the year, and a short-term extension of Medicaid funding for states and a Medicare "doc fix" (maintaining payments to doctors under Medicare).
The cost of this spending was not offset since it is considered emergency spending to stimulate the economy. But the costs of other provisions in the bill — extensions for $30 billion worth of business tax breaks often called the "tax extenders" — were offset. The biggest revenue-raiser used to offset this costs is a provision to close the "black liquor" loophole. This loophole allows paper-making companies using a carbon-rich by-product as fuel to use a tax credit that is supposed to encourage the use of environmentally-friendly alternative fuels.
But the "black liquor" provision may be used instead in the final health care reform bill. The health care reform bill approved by the House on November 7 of last year (H.R. 3962) included this revenue provision, and the President's recent proposal to bridge the differences between the House and Senate health bills also includes it.
There is another perfectly good revenue-raising provision that the Senate can use to offset most of the cost of the "tax extenders." The version of the tax extenders bill approved by the House on December 9 was supported by CTJ and several other progressive organizations because it included several good provisions, including one to close the infamous "carried interest" loophole. U.S. PIRG and CTJ issued a joint press release yesterday stating their disappointment that the Senate has not done the same.
The carried interest loophole allows billionaires managing hedge funds and buyout funds to pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income workers. The House has passed legislation three separate times to close the carried interest loophole (including the recent House-passed extenders bill), and both of President Obama’s budget plans have proposed to close it. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was quoted in Congress Daily recently saying that closing the carried interest loophole is "on the table."
Until this loophole is closed, the compensation of these fund managers will continue to be taxed at a rate of 15 percent, the preferential rate for capital gains that is supposed to benefit people who invest their own money, not the people who manage it.
New data from the IRS show that in 2007 the richest 400 taxpayers in America increased their incomes by 31 percent over the previous year, increased their share of total income in America, and paid an even lower effective tax rate than ever before.
Writing for Tax Analysts, David Cay Johnston finds that the average income of the richest 400 grew from $263.3 million in 2006 to $344.8 million in 2007. Meanwhile, their effective income tax rate fell from 17.17 percent in 2006 to 16.62 percent in 2007.
As usual, a major cause of the low effective tax rates is the preferential rate for capital gains and stock dividends, which are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent instead of the top rate of 35 percent that applies to other income for the very rich. Capital gains made up 66.3 percent of income for the top 400 in 2007, up from 62.8 percent in 2006.
The data seem to highlight the need to allow the Bush tax cuts, which cut the top rate for capital gains and stock dividends to 15 percent, to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.
The report released last week by Citizens for Tax Justice on the President's budget argued that Congress should at least allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the rich (which Obama defines as married couples with incomes above $250,000 and unmarrieds with income above $200,000) and should enact at least as many revenue-raisers as the President proposes.
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.
The U.S. House of Representatives adjourned for the year on Wednesday while the Senate hustles to finish legislation on health care. As of this writing, an array of major tax issues are still to be resolved in the next several days or when Congress returns in 2010:
Health Care Reform
On November 7, the House passed its health care bill, (H.R. 3962), which includes a public option. The largest revenue-raising provision in the House health bill is a surcharge of 5.4 percent on adjusted gross incomes over $1 million (or over $500,000 for unmarried individuals).
(See CTJ's previous analysis and state-by-state estimates of the surcharge in the House health care bill.)
The Senate is still working to pass a health care bill, and some reports claim that the chamber could be working on Christmas Eve to accomplish it. While there is a clear majority of Senators willing to support a public option, the rules allowing 41 Senators to filibuster legislation have encouraged a few conservative Democrats to join Republicans in blocking a public option.
While some details remain to be worked out, a majority of Senators seems to have settled on certain revenue-raising provisions to help pay for health care reform. The largest revenue-raiser in the still-developing Senate bill is an excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. This excise tax is controversial because many analysts conclude that these plans are not particularly generous in the benefits they provide and they are not necessarily enjoyed by high-income workers. Rather, the high costs are often the result of insurers charging more to cover a work force that is older than average or that has high health risks.
(See CTJ's previous analysis concluding that the Senate's proposed excise tax on high-cost health insurance is less progressive than the surcharge in the House health care bill.)
One revenue-raiser in the Senate proposal that is progressive is an increase in the Medicare payroll tax rate on earnings over $250,000 (or over $200,000 for an unmarried individual).
While this tax increase would only affect those who can afford to pay more, an even better proposal would reform the Medicare tax so that it no longer exempts investment income. This idea was included in an amendment that was filed by Senator Debbie Stabenow during the Finance Committee markup, but was not acted on. Such an amendment may be offered when health care reform is debated on the Senate floor.
Job Creation
On December 8, President Obama announced several proposals to create jobs. His best ideas involve direct spending by the federal government (including extending aid to unemployed and low-income people and aid to state and local governments, among other things). His worst ideas involve tax cuts (including eliminating capital gains taxes on small business investment and providing a tax credit for payroll expansion).
(See CTJ's previous discussion of President Obama's job creation proposals and ways to stimulate the economy.)
The House approved a $154 billion jobs bill, as part of a regular appropriations bill (H.R. 2847), before adjourning this week, and thankfully, it focuses on direct spending. One of the few tax cuts included is a provision to remove the earnings requirement (currently set at $3,000) for the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit, ensuring that low-income families with children can benefit from it. The Senate is not expected to take up jobs legislation until sometime next year.
Estate Tax
The tax cut legislation enacted by President Bush and his allies in Congress in 2001 set the estate tax to gradually shrink until disappearing altogether in 2010. But, like all the Bush tax cuts, this estate tax cut expires at the end of 2010, meaning the estate tax will reappear in 2011 at the pre-Bush levels if Congress simply does nothing.
Families who have several million dollars to leave to the next generation have benefited the most from the infrastructure, educated workforce, stability and other public goods that taxes make possible. So it's entirely reasonable that these families pay a tax on the transfer of their enormous estates from one generation to the next, particularly since the majority of the value in these estates is capital gains income that has never been taxed.
One might be tempted to think that allowing the estate tax to disappear would be fine if it reappears at the pre-Bush levels in 2010. Unfortunately, the one-year repeal of the estate tax could tempt some lawmakers to make that repeal permanent, or might tempt them to allow only a very scaled back version of the estate tax to reappear in 2011.
So the House of Representatives approved a compromise that would make permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009. This would partially preserve the Bush cut in the estate tax, but prevent the tax from disappearing in 2010.
Key Democratic Senators indicated that they did not want to make permanent the 2009 rules because -- incredibly -- they were interested in reducing the estate tax even more. Democratic leaders in the Senate attempted but failed to get agreement in the chamber to pass a one-year extension of the 2009 rules, which would prevent the estate tax from disappearing in 2010 and allow Congress to debate a permanent solution as part of the broader tax debate that must happen before the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of next year.
Pathetically, the Senate failed last week to prevent the one-year repeal, which they had known was coming ever since the Bush cut in the estate tax was enacted back in 2001. Democratic leaders in the Senate say they will enact the one-year extension of the 2009 estate tax rules retroactively in 2010. While retroactive tax increases may not be the ideal way to do things, this approach should not cause any problems since tax planners have known for years that Congress was likely to act to prevent this one-year disappearance of the estate tax.
Corporate Tax Breaks (aka "Tax Extenders")
On December 9, the House approved H.R. 4213, which would extend a series of tax cuts (mostly breaks for business) but would offset the costs by closing the infamous "carried interest" loophole for buyout fund managers and by cracking down on offshore tax cheats.
The bill would also require the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to issue reports evaluating these tax cuts before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again.
CTJ joined the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and eight national non-profits in signing a letter in support of H.R. 4213 for these reasons.
The provisions extending the tax cuts (often called the "tax extenders") are enacted by Congress every year or so. CTJ and other analysts have often criticized the tax extenders as corporate pork routed through the tax code.
But H.R. 4213 is a major step in the right direction for the reasons spelled out in the letter to Congress.
(See our previous article on H.R. 4213 explaining the points made in the letter.)
Democratic leaders in the Senate want to pass the tax extenders retroactively early in 2010. One problem is that the chairman of the Senate tax-writing committee, Max Baucus (D-MT) believes that the carried interest issue is “best dealt with in the context of an overall tax reform,” according to a spokesman. As we've explained before, this is an all-purpose excuse for legislators who want to avoid closing even the most unfair and outrageous loopholes.
On December 9, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 4213, which would extend a series of tax cuts (mostly breaks for business) but would offset the costs by closing the infamous "carried interest" loophole for buyout fund managers and by cracking down on offshore tax cheats.
The bill would also require the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to issue reports evaluating these tax cuts before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again. Congress would receive these reports at the same time it is trying to decide which of the Bush tax cuts should be extended, what to do with the President's tax reform proposals, and how to balance the federal budget. In this context, it is hoped that the reports will prod some lawmakers to take a more critical look at corporate tax breaks before extending them again.
CTJ joined the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and eight national non-profits in signing a letter in support of H.R. 4213 for these reasons.
The provisions extending the tax cuts (often called the "tax extenders") are enacted by Congress every year or so. CTJ and other analysts have often criticized the tax extenders as corporate pork routed through the tax code.
But H.R. 4213 is a major step in the right direction for the reasons spelled out in the letter to Congress. (See our previous article on H.R. 4213 for the points made in the letter.)
Prospects in the Senate are unclear. One problem is the full agenda the Senate has with health care reform.
Another problem is that the chairman of the Senate tax-writing committee, Max Baucus (D-MT) believes that the carried interest issue is “best dealt with in the context of an overall tax reform,” according to a spokesman. This is, frankly, an all-purpose excuse for legislators who want to avoid closing even the most unfair and outrageous loopholes. They know full well that comprehensive tax reform might not happen for decades. (The last one was in 1986, after all).
The carried interest loophole allows managers of private equity funds (a euphemistic term for buyout funds) to pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. It involves using the tax subsidy (the special top rate of 15% for capital gains) that was intended for people who invest their own money. Whether or not the capital gains tax subsidy is justified is another matter. (We believe it's not.) But private equity fund managers are not investing their own money anyway. They're being paid to manage other people's money, but by calling their compensation "carried interest" they're able to pay income taxes at the low, capital gains rate.
The notion that Congress can tackle tax schemes this blatantly unfair only in the context of comprehensive tax reform (which apparently only comes once every 25 years, if even that often) is ridiculous. Advocates of tax fairness need to call upon the Senate to approve H.R. 4213 as it was written and approved by the House of Representatives.
Citizens for Tax Justice and several other national organizations have come together to support passage of (H.R. 4213), which fairly and responsibly offsets the cost of the "tax extenders." The House of Representatives plans to vote on this bill as early as December 9.
Read the letter in support of H.R. 4213.
To be sure, many of these organizations question the efficacy and fairness of some of the "tax extenders," which are provisions that Congress enacts periodically to extend, for a year or so, various temporary tax breaks. But we nonetheless agree that the core revenue-raising provisions included in this legislation are important reforms to our tax system. We support this bill for the following reasons:
H.R. 4213 would reverse Congress's tradition of increasing the budget deficit every year by extending "temporary" tax breaks without paying for them.
Unlike many previous "tax extenders" bills, this legislation includes revenue-raising provisions that would offset the costs of extending these tax breaks. Enacting corporate tax breaks (which make up the bulk of the "tax extenders") without paying for them contributes to our federal budget deficits and our national debt, which is borne by all Americans. The revenue-raising provisions in this bill prevent an increase in the deficit while also making the tax code fairer and more efficient.
H.R. 4213 would finally close the loophole for what private equity fund managers call "carried interest." (See CTJ's previous analyses of the carried interest loophole.)
A middle-income person typically pays income taxes as high as 25 percent plus payroll taxes. Private equity fund managers can receive millions of dollars (or even billions of dollars, during boom times) in compensation for their work, but by calling this income "carried interest," they pay only income taxes at a 15 percent rate.
The "carried interest" label essentially allows these fund managers to pretend that this income is a return on capital investments (and thus eligible for the exception in the income tax that subjects capital gains to an income tax rate of no more than 15 percent). This pretense clearly contradicts the will of Congress in creating the subsidy for capital gains, which was meant to reward those who invested their own money, not those who are simply being paid to manage other people's money.
H.R. 4213 also includes a proposal introduced by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel to prevent wealthy Americans from cheating on their U.S. taxes by hiding their income in offshore tax havens. (See CTJ's analysis of tax haven legislation.)
While this proposal is not as strong as we would prefer, it would be an important step forward to ensure that all Americans pay their fair share in taxes. Middle-income Americans typically have few opportunities to hide their income from the IRS. But wealthy Americans have access to lawyers and accountants who help them hide their income in offshore tax havens. Tax havens are countries that have a very low income tax (or no income tax) and laws that prevent their banks from cooperating with IRS enforcement efforts.
While the vast majority of taxpayers at all income levels do the right thing and pay their fair share, a minority of wealthy Americans are engaging in these activities that are both illegal and unfair. The Baucus-Rangel proposal would create strong incentives for foreign banks to provide information that would help the IRS identify tax cheats without creating any significant burden on the banks or their honest customers.
H.R. 4213 requires that the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) conduct studies evaluating the "tax extenders" before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again. (See CTJ's report calling on Congress and the administration to conduct regular reviews of tax expenditures.)
Providing a special corporate tax break through the tax code has the exact same effect as providing a subsidy through direct spending. Unfortunately, lawmakers have made almost no attempt to evaluate or even think critically about the effectiveness of corporate tax breaks before extending them each year. This contrasts significantly with lawmakers' attitudes towards the discretionary spending that they grapple with annually.
JCT's reports of the effectiveness of tax breaks will at least provide Congress with a basis to judge whether or not these tax provisions are worth their costs. This is a common sense reform that is long overdue.
President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) recently requested ideas from the public about how the federal tax system could be reformed. The comments submitted by Citizens for Tax Justice yesterday begin "We want a fairer, simpler tax code that raises enough money to pay for public services and promotes economic prosperity for all Americans. Our current tax system falls far short of achieving these goals."
The comments note that:
- On the revenue side, even after the current recession ends, we can expect to be funding about a quarter of all non-Social Security spending with borrowed money (including amounts borrowed from the Social Security trust fund).
- As for simplicity and fairness, well, both parties have been guilty of using the tax code to promote a vast array of favored activities. One result is that taxpayers with similar incomes can be treated wildly differently depending on how they make their money or how they spend it.
- In fact, our current tax system allows many of our biggest and most profitable corporations to pay little or no tax.
The rest of the comments lay out principles for solving these problems.
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.
Environmentalists have their eyes on the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid has given several committees a September 28 deadline to mark up climate change legislation. The legislation is expected to include a "cap-and-trade" program, in which companies would need to have allowances to emit greenhouse gases, and the amount of allowances would be capped at a level that would decline for several years.
The House of Representatives passed its version (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) in June. It's clear that America needs to act to reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. But it's equally clear that the Senate could do better than the House did in addressing this problem.
President Obama proposed in his first budget that Congress create a cap-and-trade system in which all of the emissions allowances are auctioned off to companies rather than given away for free. The overall amount of allowances would be capped and reduced each year. The revenue raised could be largely used, the President reasoned, for a refundable tax credit that would offset the impact of the resulting higher energy costs for low- and middle-income families.
The House cap-and-trade bill only auctions off 15 percent of the allowances, and the revenue raised would help offset the costs for the poorest fifth of families. So 85 percent of the allowances would not be auctioned off, but neither would they be doled out for free to corporations (not all of them anyway). There would be strings attached for some. For example, local utility companies would initially get almost half of the allowances, but in return they would be required to pass savings onto consumers. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why this is an inefficient way to protect consumers.
The Senate might repeat the House's mistakes. One of the Senate committees with partial jurisdiction over the legislation will be the Finance Committee, whose chairman (Max Baucus of Montana) recently told Congressional Quarterly that the Senate would probably not allocate the emissions allowances all that differently than the House bill does.
The increased costs that middle-income families would see if the House bill becomes law are not gigantic ($235 a year according to the Congressional Budget Office). But Congress needs to decide whether the increased prices paid for energy should go largely towards corporate profits (which seems to be the likely result of the House-passed bill) or be redirected back to consumers.
The Senate could accomplish the latter by auctioning off more than 15 percent of the allowances and using the revenue to offset the increased energy costs more effectively for both low- and middle-income families. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that refundable tax credits, combined with more use of EBT cards, would be an effective way to deliver the necessary energy refund to the vast majority of low- and middle-income families.
The Senate might not just repeat the House's mistakes. They might even add a few of their own. Baucus told the Daily Tax Report that “Congress could use the money from auctioning allowances to cut taxes: by cutting marginal rates, by cutting capital gains rates, by cutting payroll taxes. Or we could do all of the above.”
To take just one of these ridiculous ideas, the preferential rates that already exist for capital gains and dividends already cost us around $100 billion a year and the vast majority of the benefits go to the richest one percent of taxpayers. Let's hope Senator Baucus sees that relief for consumers is more important than showering more special breaks on wealthy investors.
Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) has joined forces with a broad coalition of organizations called Rebuild and Renew America Now (RRAN) to promote a simple message: Congress has a whole lot of options to raise revenue to pay for health care reform and other initiatives without unfairly impacting low- or middle-income people and without harming the economy.
These progressive revenue options include both the tax changes included in President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget proposals as well as additional options formulated in a recent report by CTJ and endorsed by Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). (See CTJ's report on the President's tax proposals and CTJ's report on additional revenue options to fund health care reform.)
RRAN is a coalition that engaged in education, communications and lobbying efforts in support of the President's budget and other progressive initiatives earlier this year and has mobilized advocates and activists all over the country. Many of the organizations involved are usually focused on particular public services or progressive reforms, but have realized that all public services and reforms are in danger if Congress can't bring itself to raise the revenue needed to pay for them.
RRAN has invited organizations (both national organizations and state organizations) to sign onto its two-page statement of principles for this new campaign for progressive revenue options. Signing does not commit an organization to do anything (although all are also encouraged to become active in RRAN's activities) but simply states support for efforts to pay for initiatives in progressive ways. Anyone who is authorized to sign on behalf of an organization can visit the website of the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) or simply click here.
The statement lists three broad principles to guide Congress's efforts to find revenue:
1. Adequacy. The federal tax system should raise sufficient revenue over time to meet our shared priorities and invest in our common future.
2. Fairness. Tax preferences that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and corporations should be eliminated, and individuals and businesses should contribute their fair share of taxes, based on ability to pay.
3. Responsibility. We should not saddle future generations with unsustainable levels of debt.
The statement also lists examples of the kinds of tax policies RRAN supports:
- raising revenues from upper-income households;
- assessing a significant tax on large estates;
- reducing abuses among corporations and individuals who shelter income in offshore tax evasion or avoidance schemes;
- closing financial industry, oil and gas, and other inefficient corporate loopholes; and
- reducing tax preferences for unearned as opposed to earned income.
For more information in the coming days, visit RRAN's website: www.rebuildandrenew.org
On May 11, the Treasury Department released its "Green Book" containing new details of the tax changes included in the President's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal. In addition to extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest Americans and making permanent many of the tax cuts in the recently enacted economic recovery act, the President would also make many changes that would raise revenue by closing loopholes, blocking tax avoidance schemes and making the tax code more progressive.
A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice examines and describes the significant revenue-raising provisions that are sure to be debated fiercely in the months to come.
This week, Citizens for Tax Justice updated its recent report on the tax proposals in the President's budget outline to include estimates of the proposals' impacts on different income groups in every state. The new state figures examine the proposed cuts compared to current law and also compared to the baseline that the Obama administration uses in presenting its budget figures. The figures show that, whichever baseline is used, the vast majority of families in every state will get a significant tax break.
Read the report. (State-by-state figures are in the final appendix.
On February 26, President Obama sent to Congress the blueprint for what could be one of the most progressive federal budgets in generations. The budget calls for national health care reform, expanded education funding, a program to reduce global warming, and several improvements in human needs programs. As a new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains, it would make the tax code considerably more progressive, and close a number of egregious tax loopholes.
There is, however, a flaw in the budget proposal: It does not raise enough revenue to pay for public services. Instead, its net effect is to cut taxes dramatically.
Opponents of the President have attempted to argue that the budget proposal calls for tax increases that could sink the economy, but this complaint is plainly unfounded. President Bush and his allies in Congress were adamant that lower taxes would lead to an explosion of prosperity, and they enacted tax cuts in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006. Some allies of the former President argue that Congress is now insufficiently focused on tax cuts, but this view seems bizarre and incredible given the sad economic facts all around us.
Indeed, one might reasonably conclude that we could safely allow most of the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010, as they are scheduled to under current law, without any concern about how this will impact the economy. But President Obama actually proposes to keep most of the Bush tax cuts. Obama's largest proposed tax cut is to re-enact 80 percent of the Bush tax cuts that are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Most of this reflects re-enacting the Bush income tax cuts for married couples with incomes below $250,000 and others with incomes below $200,000 (or put another way, for about 98 percent of taxpayers), and permanently reducing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). In addition, Obama proposes to re-enact close to half of the Bush estate tax cut.
On top of re-enacting most of the Bush tax cuts, the Obama budget includes a number of additional tax cuts for families and individuals. (These would be extensions of temporary tax cuts included in the recently passed stimulus law.) It also proposes some questionable business tax cuts.
Partially offsetting its tax-cut proposals, the Obama budget proposes some significant revenue-raising provisions. These include a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, a limit on the benefits of itemized deductions for high-bracket taxpayers, and a number of corporate and high-income loophole-closing measures.
It was bound to happen. In response to the crisis on Wall Street, some members of the Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives proposed a familiar solution: tax cuts. In particular, they proposed a suspension of capital gains taxes for both individuals and corporations for two years, after which capital gains would be reduced from their current levels because "assets would be indexed permanently for any inflationary gains." The article from BNA that landed in our inboxes actually said that they proposed this measure "as a way to coax capital back into sluggish lending markets and offset the cost of a proposed government bailout of the U.S. financial system."
If suspending a tax altogether (that is, lowering its rate to zero) can increase revenue and offset the cost of anything, then supply-side economics may have risen above the laws of the known universe entirely into some new, unknown realm beyond our comprehension.
It would be comforting to believe that this thinking is confined to some small fringe group of lawmakers. Actually, the Republican presidential nominee is not far behind. John McCain recently proposed to temporarily slash the capital gains tax rate to a super-low 7.5 percent. (See CTJ's recent paper, "McCain's Proposal to Expand the Loophole for Capital Gains Would Be Unfair and Counterproductive.")
This seems like the ideal time to ask what exactly supply-side tax cuts for investment have accomplished. Bush expanded the tax subsidy for capital gains (lowering the special capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 15 percent) and created a new one for dividends (which was taxed like any other income but is now taxed at a top rate of 15 percent). We do not know that the Bush tax cuts for investment actually contributed to the financial collapse. But the notion that they contributed to excessively risky investments and helped fuel the calamity is at least as reasonable as the notion that they helped grow the economy, considering our current economic situation.
There are several conceptual reasons why these tax subsidies for investment are simply not sensible policy. For one, it offends most people's idea of basic fairness that someone who earns $42,000 from work can be taxed at a higher rate than someone who receives the same amount of income by collecting dividend checks. Why someone like Paris Hilton, who probably lives off her wealth, should be taxed at a lower rate than someone who actually works has never been adequately explained by the proponents of these tax cuts.
But in addition to that, the subsidy leads to all sorts of shifty tax dodging behavior that makes the economy less efficient, since money is invested in certain activities or properties merely to get a tax break, rather than because it's the most efficient use of capital.
Supply-siders sometimes have their very best luck in convincing the naive to adopt their views when they're talking about the capital gains tax. Part of the reason for this is that capital gains tax revenues fluctuate wildly with economic cycles, rocketing upwards during the good times and crashing during recessions. The charts illustrating capital gains tax revenue have lines that look like rollercoasters, and supply-siders often confuse the unwary into believing that some cut in the capital gains tax rate caused one of the upswings.
For example, as a paper published earlier this year by CTJ explains, capital gains tax revenue crashed during the recession in 2001. This revenue of course climbed back up from that low point, as we would expect. But because this natural upswing coincided with Bush's cut in the capital gains rate from 20 percent to 15 percent, supply-siders (like the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal) argue that the Bush tax cut caused this revenue to increase. What they leave out of the story is the fact that capital gains tax revenue was higher at the end of the Clinton years, when the capital gains rate was higher.
The argument over revenues can seem like an arcane debate full of jargon and charts and tables, but the fairness problem posed by the loopholes for investment income is readily apparent. These loopholes direct a huge amount of money to the rich. Earlier this year, CTJ released a report finding that 70 percent of the benefits of the capital gains and dividends loopholes will go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers in 2009. Of course recent events on Wall Street will lower the capital gains reported in 2009, but there is no particular reason why the distribution of the benefits from these loopholes would be any different. Unlike the supply-siders, we will resist the temptation to say that the coming change in capital gains tax revenue is a direct result of the Bush administration's policies. (Although the case could be made...)