Month: March 2013

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.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin’s proposal to repeal the state’s top personal income tax bracket is “gaining traction,” according to The Oklahoman.  The plan has already passed the House, and has the support of the state Chamber of Commerce. But the Oklahoma Policy Institute explains that this cut is stacked in favor of high-income residents: “the bottom 60 percent of Oklahomans would receive just 9 percent of the benefit from this tax cut, while the top 5 percent would receive 42 percent of the benefit.”  

Texas and Washington State are continuing to search for ways to make it easier to identify and repeal tax breaks that aren’t worth their cost.  The Texas Austin American-Statesman reports on a bill that “would put the tax code under the microscope, examining tax breaks in a six-year cycle similar to the Sunset process that evaluates whether state agencies are performing as intended.”  And the Washington Budget and Policy Center explains in a blog post how “all three branches of state government have taken, or are poised to take, actions that could greatly enhance transparency over the hundreds of special tax breaks on the books in Washington state.”

This Toledo Blade editorial gets it right about Ohio Governor Kasich’s plan to broaden the sales tax base to include more services: “There is merit, in theory, to expanding the sales tax to include more services. But the experience in states such as Florida — which broadened its tax base, then abandoned the effort as unworkable — suggests it should be done slowly and for the right reasons.” Broadening the sales tax base is good policy, but the Kasich plan is bad for Ohioans because overall the plan (according to an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis) increases taxes on those who can least afford it while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

ITEP is waiting for full details of Louisiana Governor BobbyJindal’s tax swap plan, but already clergy and ministers in the state are weighing in against the Governor’s plan to eliminate state income taxes and replace the revenue with a broader sales tax base and a higher rate. In this commentary, the Right Rev. Jacob W. Owensby, (bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana), worries: “It is difficult to see how increased sales taxes will pass the test of fairness that we would all insist upon. Our tax system has lots of room for improvement. But relying on increased sales tax will not give us the fair system we need. Raising sales taxes will increase the burden on those who can least afford it.”

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.

New Mexico lawmakers recently approved a cut in the corporate income tax rate and special tax breaks for manufacturers and filmmakers. State officials estimate that the bill will eventually cost (PDF) the state about $55 million in lost revenue per year, but they admit that they’re not especially confident in their estimates.  The Santa Fe New Mexican explains how the vote in the House literally came down to the final seconds of the legislative session, and says that House Speaker Kenny Martinez “acknowledged that some [House] members may not have been familiar with [the bill] at all.”

The largest single tax cut contained in the bill is a reduction in the corporate income tax rate from 7.6 to 5.9 percent, phased-in over five years.  The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), recently found that the corporate income tax is one of New Mexico’s few progressive taxes in a tax system that is sharply regressive overall.  On top of this cut, lawmakers voted to give manufacturers the option to use a tax break known as single sales factor (PDF) that only benefits businesses selling most of their products out-of-state.  The package also expanded tax giveaways for filmmakers that are widely understood to offer little economic benefit.

To pay for a portion of the cost of these cuts, the bill raises sales taxes on manufacturers, cuts aid to local governments (though it lets them raise their own sales taxes), trims some existing tax credits, and limits the tax avoidance opportunities available to some “big box” retailers through the adoption of mandatory “combined reporting” (PDF) for those companies.

Overall, however, the corporate tax rate cut represents a case of misplaced priorities in a state whose tax system is fundamentally unfair and where funding for things like higher education has been slashed in recent years.

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.

A story in the Arkansas News show why all citizens should be concerned about the bad design (PDF) of state gasoline taxes. Arkansas’ gas tax hasn’t been raised in over a decade, during which time it has lost about a quarter of its value due to rising construction costs alone. In order to offset those losses, lawmakers are debating a bill that would transfer $2.3 billion away from other areas of the state budget in order to pay for roads and bridges over the next 10 years.  At a rally protesting the idea, Rich Huddleston of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families ticked off just some of the state services that would have to be cut: “education, higher education, Medicaid and health services for vulnerable populations, services for abused and neglected children, juvenile justice services for kids … public safety and corrections and pre-K and child care for our youngest populations.”

Girl Scouts in Idaho are seeking out a special sales tax loophole for selling their cookies so that they can keep an extra 22 cents on every box sold. There is no tax policy reason to exempt Girl Scout cookies from the sales tax. If enacted, this break would be a true “tax expenditure” — a state spending program grafted onto the tax code (PDF) in a way that exempts it from the normal processes used to manage state spending year in and year out.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is traveling the state on a “Meetings with Mark” tour to discuss his budget and tax plans with voters. Last week the Governor unveiled a revised tax plan, but minus the sales tax base expansion from his original proposal.  Wayne Cox of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice supports the new proposal as it retains two crucial pieces of the original – an income tax hikes for wealthy Minnesotans and a cigarette tax hike. “Gov. Mark Dayton’s new budget is a blueprint for fairer taxes and a brighter future for Minnesota families.  His reforms pave the way for new jobs, healthier lives and a better-educated workforce. Education and health experts around the state have praised Gov. Dayton’s reforms. Future economic growth depends on these changes.”

In response to Ohio Governor John Kasich’s regressive proposal to expand the state sales tax base and lower income taxes, Policy Matters Ohio (using ITEP data) released a paper reminding Ohioans how beneficial an Earned Income Tax Credit (PDF) could be to low-income families hit hardest by an increased sales tax.

Here’s a powerful column from the Atlanta Journal Constitution citing ITEP data. Advocating against a state Senator’s proposal to raise the Georgia sales tax and freeze revenues into the future, Jay Bookman writes: [h]e has proposed two amendments to the state constitution that, if approved by voters, would lead to significantly higher taxes on the vast majority of Georgia households, while sharply reducing taxes on the wealthiest. That ought to be controversial under any circumstances. As it is, lower- and middle-income Georgia households already pay a significantly higher percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do the wealthy. The Shafer amendments would make that disparity considerably worse.”

UPDATE: As of March 29, 2013 this plan has passed both the House and Senate and is expected to be signed into law by the Governor.

This week, the Maryland House will vote on a plan to raise and reform the state’s gasoline tax. The plan is very similar to one proposed by Governor Martin O’Malley that our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), analyzed when it was released two weeks ago.

An updated chart from ITEP shows that Maryland’s flat gas tax has long been declining as inflation has chipped away at its value.  If the legislature does not raise the gas tax, ITEP projects that by 2014 Maryland’s gas tax rate will reach its lowest (inflation adjusted) level in 91 years. Only in 1922 and 1923 did Maryland levy a lower gas tax.

Moreover, the gas tax increase under consideration in the House, like the one proposed by the Governor, is actually very modest. The plan (which would tie the gas tax to both inflation and gas prices) would result in roughly a 12 cent increase by 2015. That’s significantly less than the nearly 16 cent increase that ITEP found would be needed to return Maryland’s gas tax to its purchasing power as of 1992, when it was last raised. Taking an even longer-term perspective, ITEP finds that Maryland’s inflation-adjusted gas tax rate has historically averaged 41.1 cents per gallon.  If the House plan is enacted, the inflation-adjusted rate over the next decade would average just 32.8 cents.

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.