Month: March 2013

Note to Readers: This is the last in a six part series on tax reform in the states. Over the past several weeks CTJ’s partner organization, The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has highlighted tax reform proposals and looked at the policy trends that are gaining momentum in states across the country.

Lawmakers in at least six states have proposed effectively cutting taxes for moderate- and low-income working families through expanding, restoring or enacting new state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) (PDF). Unfortunately, state EITCs are also under attack in a handful of states where lawmakers are looking to reduce their benefit or even eliminate the credit altogether.

The federal EITC is widely recognized by experts and lawmakers across the political spectrum as an effective anti-poverty strategy. It was introduced in 1975 to provide targeted tax reductions to low-income workers and supplement low wages. Twenty-four states plus the District of Columbia provide EITCs modeled on the federal credit. At the state level, EITCs play an important role in offsetting the regressive effects of state and local tax systems.

Positive Developments

• Last week, the Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee approved legislation to increase the state’s EITC from 7 to 20 percent. Committee Chairman Joe Bolkcom said, “This bill is what tax relief looks like. The tax relief is going to people who pay more than their fair share.”

• The Honolulu Star-Advertiser recently reported on the push to create an EITC and a poverty tax credit (PDF) in Hawaii. The story cites data from ITEP showing that Hawaii has the fourth highest taxes on the poor in the country and describes the work being done in support of low-income tax relief by the Hawaii Appleseed Center.  The poverty tax credit would help end Hawaii’s distinction as one of just 15 states that taxes its working poor deeper into poverty through the income tax.

• In Michigan, lawmakers are looking to reverse a recent 70 percent cut in the state’s EITC.  That change raised taxes on some 800,000 low-income families in order to pay for a package of business tax cuts.  Lawmakers have introduced legislation to restore the EITC to its previous value of 20 percent of the federal credit, and advocates are supporting the idea through the “Save Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit” campaign. 

• Pushing back against New Jersey Governor Christie’s reduction of the EITC from 25 to 20 percent, last month the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee approved a bill to restore the credit to 25 percent. Senator Shirley Turner, the bill’s sponsor, said there was no reason to delay its passage as some have suggested because low-income New Jersey families need the credit now.  “People would put this money into their pockets immediately. I think they would be able to buy food, clothing and pay their rent and their utility bills. Those are the things people are struggling to do.”

• Oregon’s EITC is set to expire at the end of this year, but Governor Kitzhaber views it as a way to help “working families keep more of what they earn and move up the income ladder” so his budget extends and increases the EITC by $22 million. Chuck Sheketoff with the Oregon Center for Public Policy argues in this op-ed, “[t]he Oregon Earned Income Tax credit is a small investment that can make a large difference in the lives of working families. These families have earned the credit through work. Lawmakers should renew and strengthen the credit now, not later.”

• In Utah, a legislator sponsored a bill to introduce a five percent EITC in the state. The bipartisan legislation is unlikely to pass because of funding concerns, but the fact that the EITC is on the radar there is a good development. Rep. Eric Hutchings said that offering a refundable credit to working families “sends the message that if you work and are trying to climb out of that hole, we will drop a ladder in.”

Negative Developments

• Last week, North Carolina Governor McCrory signed legislation that reduces the state’s EITC to 4.5 percent. The future looks grim for even this scaled down credit, though, since it is allowed to sunset after 2013 and it’s unlikely the credit will be reintroduced. It’s worth noting that the state just reduced taxes on the wealthiest .2 percent of North Carolinians by eliminating the state’s estate tax, at a cost of more than $60 million a year. Additionally, by cutting the EITC the legislature recently increased taxes on low-income working families, saving a mere $11 million in revenues.

• Just two years after signing legislation introducing an EITC, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is recommending it be temporarily reduced “from the current 30 percent of the federal EITC to 25 percent next year, 27.5 percent the year after that, and then restoring it to 30 percent in 2015.” In an op-ed published in the Hartford Courant, Jim Horan with the Connecticut Association for Human Services asks, “But do we really want to raise taxes on hard-working parents earning only $18,000 a year?”

• Last week in the Kansas Senate, a bill (PDF) was introduced to cut the state’s EITC from 17 to 9 percent of its federal counterpart. This would be on top of the radical changes signed into law last year by Governor Sam Brownback which eliminated two credits targeted to low-income families including the Food Sales Tax Rebate.

• Vermont Governor Shumlin wants to cut the EITC and redirect the revenue to child care subsidy programs, a move described as taking from the poor to give to the poor. A recent op-ed by Jack Hoffman at Vermont’s Public Assets Institute cites ITEP Who Pays data to make the case for maintaining the EITC.  Calling the Governor’s idea a “nonstarter,” House and Senate legislators are exploring their own ideas for funding mechanisms to pay for the EITC at its current level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal today announced some details of his long-awaited “tax swap” plan. He proposes to repeal the state’s personal and corporate income taxes in a “revenue-neutral” way—that is, the revenue loss from repealing these taxes would have to be entirely offset by tax hikes in other areas.

We know the Governor’s so-called reform plan would increase the state sales tax rate from 4 to 5.88 percent—which in local-tax-heavy Louisiana means the average combined state and local sales tax rate statewide would shoot up from about 8.75 percent to a whopping 10.6 percent.

Since the sales tax rate hike would only pay for about a third of the revenue lost from repealing the income and corporate taxes, Jindal’s plan also relies heavily on expanding the state sales tax base to make up the remaining difference. Acccording to the Governor, he’d do it by eliminating close to 200 currently-existing sales tax exemptions. Jindal would also raise the cigarette tax by over $1 per pack.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the plan (which was the case with his earlier plan, too). Jindal has said he will provide tax relief to seniors and low-income families to offset the impact of these potentially huge sales tax hikes. But how that would be implemented—and, critically, how much it would cost—remains unknown.

Still, the specific details we’ve heard so far are enough to raise several important concerns about the plan’s plausibility—and its impact on tax fairness and sustainability if it is enacted.

Eliminating sales tax exemptions is perhaps the most politically difficult tax reform challenge for state lawmakers – as Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is the most recent to discover. Sure, every state tax commission for decades has identified expanding the sales tax base, mainly to services that account for more consumer dollars every year, as a way of making the sales tax a more sustainable revenue source for the long haul. But the fact is that the potentially devastating impact of this move on low-income families, coupled with the entrenched opposition of lobbyists for the many industries that would be newly taxed under these proposals, have generally meant that these proposals die a quick death in legislatures.

And even if the Louisiana Legislature could achieve what virtually no other state has ever done—wiping the slate clean by broadly erasing sales tax exemptions from the books—it seems inevitable that the plan as a whole would result in a massive tax shift onto middle- and low-income families—and a giant tax cut for the best-off Louisianans. Unless, that is, Louisiana is prepared to enact a low-income tax credit, one so generous it would dwarf anything offered by other states. But it appears that Governor Jindal’s plan would only provide a tax rebate only to families earning less than $20,000, which does nothing to offset the sales tax increases facing a large group of middle-income Louisianans.

In recent months, Jindal has also made it clear that his motivation for this tax plan is to be more “competitive” and more like Texas and other “low tax” states. (Never mind that Texas is a high tax state for its poorest residents.)  Jindal has bought into a talking point crafted by Arthur Laffer (and disseminated by groups like ALEC and the Tax Foundation) about job growth resulting from low taxes.  But Laffer’s argument is a house of cards, entirely unsupported by the evidence, as ITEP has shown.  Early news reports of Jindal’s plan are that anti-tax groups love it and it boosts his odds of getting the Republican presidential nomination. But unless a tax plan is well received by ordinary constituents and boosts the state’s odds of economic success, it isn’t worthy of the word “reform.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Murray Plan

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

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

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

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

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Plan

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

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

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

The nation is watching Indiana’s tax debate, according to Tim Phillips, national president of the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity.  But the outcome that Phillips is looking for —a regressive cut in the state’s personal income tax—is facing an uphill battle. The Indiana House, under supermajority Republican control, chose not to include Governor Pence’s proposed tax cut in its budget. Senate leadership has yet to embrace the tax cut either, and the state’s largest newspaper recently editorialized against the plan, explaining: “What holds back faster economic growth now is less about taxes than the lack of a well-educated workforce and higher than average business costs associated with Hoosiers’ poor health.”

But despite all this resistance, Americans for Prosperity is determined to gin up some interest in cutting Indiana’s income tax rate. The Indiana chapter of the group announced that it will spearhead a major TV, radio, online advertising, and door-to-door campaign.  As Phillips explained, “In Washington, it’s gridlock and really that’s not where the action is.” 

There’s reason to hope this campaign doesn’t pressure lawmakers into enacting a tax cut against their better judgment, though. In a letter to state GOP officials, House Speaker Brian Bosma recently made a compelling case against the cut and offered a warning about the dire consequences that could arise from following Kansas as it staggers and stumbles down its own tax-cutting path (excerpt below):

“With respect to the Income Tax cut proposal, legislative leaders have expressed caution on this issue for a variety of reasons, which I want you to understand.  First, in 1998, the last time the state had a $2 billion surplus, a series of Income Tax and Property Tax cuts coupled with an unexpected downturn in the economy turned that surplus into a $1.3 billion deficit in a short six year period.  When Republicans regained the majority in 2004, our first order of business was to fill that hole through cuts (and not tax increases), and we did it.  It was painful and difficult, but we knew that the most important job of state government is to be lean, efficient, and most importantly, sustainable in the long run, avoiding wild shifts in one direction or another.  That uncertainty of big shifts leads to uncertainty for business investment and family security.  With pending sequestration, looming federal mandates and an uncertain national economy on the horizon, caution is certainly advisable.

“Finally, the Governor cites the recent experience of Kansas in cutting income taxes last year under the leadership of Governor Sam Brownback.  I would encourage you to get online and see what is going on in Kansas right now, as news reports abound of projected deficits, delays in proposed tax cuts, and lawsuits for underfunding public education.  This is just the type of economic unpredictability and unsustainability that we hope to avoid here in Indiana.”

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

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

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

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

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

Need further proof that the poor are often taxed more heavily than wealthier folks? Take a look at this recent New York Times piece by sociologist Katherine Newman based on her book. She writes that “tax policy is particularly regressive in the South and West, and more progressive in the Northeast and Midwest. When it comes to state and local taxation, we are not one nation under God. In 2008, the difference between a working mother in Mississippi and one in Vermont — each with two dependent children, poverty-level wages and identical spending patterns — was $2,300.” Newman concludes with suggestions for offsetting the regressive impact of state taxes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution is doing an investigative series on tax breaks and incentives, and here’s their latest article – a look into “the Georgia Agricultural Tax exemption program, [designed] to allow farmers and companies that produce $2,500 in agricultural services or products a year to receive sales tax breaks on equipment and production purchases.” What they found, however, is that construction firms, mineral companies, horse ranches and even dog kennels have applied for the breaks, along with hundreds of out-of-state businesses, with addresses as far afield as Texas and Colorado.” The newspaper found very few requests for this tax break were being rejected, and the governor is imploring businesses to police themselves. The newspaper concludes that it was the absence of clear criteria and lack of resources for screening and evaluating applications that’s resulted in the fiscal and logistical chaos.

Washington State lawmakers are trying to get a better handle on the numerous special tax breaks (PDF) being added to the state’s tax code every year. Under a bill that passed the state senate unanimously, new tax breaks would have to include a statement of purpose against which to judge their subsequent success, and an expiration date that would force lawmakers to vote on them again after a certain number of years.  Both of those reforms (along with others) have been recommended by our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick cited a recent report from ITEP’s “Debunking Laffer” series while testifying in favor of his proposed income tax increase: “Last month, the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a report evaluating the economic growth per capita of several states. The report compared nine states with relatively high income taxes to nine states with low or no income tax. The analysis made clear that the nine states with “higher” income taxes actually saw considerably more economic growth per capita than the nine states with low or no income tax. The states with no income tax have seen a decline in median income.”

The Missouri Senate preliminarily approved legislation that would slash the state’s revenues because it is stacked with tax cuts. Though a preliminary legislative step, it’s worth noting that if the law does get implemented, restoring the lost revenues would be nearly impossible given Missouri’s constitutional amendment restricting tax increases. The bill, originating in the state Senate, cuts the top personal income tax rate, reduces corporate income taxes, offers a tax deduction for pass-through business income and increases the personal exemption. The only tax increase is in the sales tax, which is any state’s most regressive revenue source.  

This package is billed as Missouri’s answer to the radical tax package passed last year by Kansas Governor Brownback. Its sponsor explained, “I’m trying to stop the bleeding. I’m trying to stop the businesses from fleeing into Kansas,” and then invokes the kind of magical thinking that almost always results in a deficit. According to the Associated Press, State Senator Kraus predicted his plan would “create an economic engine in our state” that would generate enough new tax revenues to make up for the losses.”

But the revenue losses — which are certain — are not justified. A report from the Missouri Budget Project, Racing to the Bottom: Senate Gives Initial Approval to Extreme Tax Cut Bill Which Would Devastate Missouri Services, Infrastructure, and the State’s Economy, using Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) data helps show that the biggest beneficiaries of this tax package are the wealthiest 1 percent who have an average income of over $1 million, and who will see an average tax cut of $8,253 if the legislation becomes law. Middle income families would generally break even, but lower income Missourians would experience a tax increase.  

The Missouri Budget Project points out the obvious: “To truly compete with Kansas and other states, Missouri must invest in its quality of life and what families and businesses need to thrive: strong schools to educate our children and provide a skilled workforce, quality transportation to get to school and work and bring companies’ products to market, and safe, stable communities.”