November 29, 2010 01:20 PM | Permalink | Presumptive House Speaker John Boehner recently confessed that “what Washington sometimes calls ‘tax cuts’ are really just poorly disguised spending programs that expand the role of government in the lives of individuals and employers.” We couldn’t agree more. What’s odd, though, is that Rep. Boehner has proposed […]
November 12, 2010 01:12 PM | Permalink | Five facts about how President Obama’s tax plan would (and would not) impact small businesses. Read the report. Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!
October 26, 2010 08:17 AM | Permalink | Tax reform is important and desirable, but too often short-lived. Absent action to address the biases in favor of tax expenditures, lawmakers have almost no chance of maintaining a reformed tax code for long, nor do they have much chance of being able to impartially decide whether […]
October 22, 2010 03:13 PM | Permalink | On Sunday, October 10, Harvard professor Greg Mankiw wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that if taxes go up, he’ll work less. We take exception to both Mankiw’s calculations and his theory of how taxes affect behavior. Read the report. Want even more CTJ? […]
October 20, 2010 02:18 PM | Permalink | New data from the IRS show that only 0.6 percent of deaths in the U.S. in 2008 resulted in estate tax liability. The estate tax that would exist under President Obama’s tax plan would affect even fewer estates, which demonstrates why Congress should consider enacting a more […]
October 19, 2010 01:33 PM | Permalink | The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), signed into law by President Barack Obama, expanded two refundable tax credits, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. While most of the provisions in ARRA are intended to be temporary, President Obama has proposed making […]
September 28, 2010 01:43 PM | Permalink | Forty-seven House Democrats have reportedly written a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for an extension of the Bush tax cuts on investment income for the richest two percent of Americans. These Democrats would preserve the historically low income tax rate of 15 percent for capital gains and […]
September 21, 2010 12:36 PM | Permalink | Last week, 31 House Democrats signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of extending the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, and thus opposing President Obama’s proposal to allow the tax cuts to expire for the very rich. New data from Citizens for Tax […]
September 21, 2010 12:33 PM | Permalink | Word on the street is that the Senate is considering including an unlimited farm exclusion from estate tax when it addresses the expiring Bush tax cuts during this work period. This report explains how this provision is not likely to help true family farms as much as […]
September 17, 2010 10:03 AM | Permalink | With both the Bush tax cuts and President Obama’s expansions of certain parts of those cuts set to expire at the end of 2010, the decisions Congress makes in the coming weeks will have very different effects on taxpayers at different income levels, according to a new […]
September 10, 2010 01:15 PM | Permalink | Here are some of the myths you may have heard during the debate over tax cuts, as well as the facts. Read the report. Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!
September 1, 2010 03:27 PM | Permalink | Use CTJ’s online tax calculator to find out what tax cut you would receive under different tax proposals. Unless you are among the richest 2 percent of taxpayers, you will find that President Obama’s tax proposal would benefit you as much as, or more than, an extension […]
August 3, 2010 01:52 PM | Permalink | On April 15, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced (H.R. 5029) “The Economic Freedom Act,” with the blessing of the House Republican Study Committee. This report finds that H.R. 5029 would add almost $7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten […]
July 22, 2010 11:46 AM | Permalink | Only seniors who are among the richest two percent of taxpayers would lose any of their dividend tax cuts under proposals being discussed. Arguments that corporations would reduce dividend payments in response are not credible because two-thirds of dividends are paid to tax-exempt entities. Read the report. […]
July 19, 2010 02:59 PM | Permalink | The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig has focused the world’s attention on the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It also reminds us of another disaster — the U.S. international tax system. Read the report. Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, […]
July 16, 2010 03:54 PM | Permalink | On July 14, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief economic adviser for John McCain’s presidential campaign and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave written and oral testimony to the Senate Finance Committee concerning the Bush tax cuts. To make his case, Holtz-Eakin endorsed several myths about the Bush […]
July 9, 2010 03:57 PM | Permalink | In the wake of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the public and the media have turned their attention to some of the subsidies provided through the tax code to BP, the corporation that leased the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. This report describes […]
July 2, 2010 12:38 PM | Permalink | CTJ Director Bob McIntyre recently testified before the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The testimony discusses income tax reform as a means of raising revenue. Watch the testimony. Read the testimony. Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!
June 17, 2010 12:56 PM | Permalink | The Peter G. Peterson Institute has come out against provisions in H.R. 4213 that would prevent multinational corporations from abusing foreign tax credits. The two-page complaint written by Peterson’s Gary Hufbauer and Theodore Moran attempts to defend practices by corporations that are indefensible. Read the report. Want […]
June 15, 2010 03:37 PM | Permalink | The tax extenders bill (H.R. 4213) currently pending in Congress contains a provision to close what is commonly known as the “John Edwards” loophole, which allows some shareholder-employees of “S corporations” to avoid paying the Medicare payroll tax on their earnings. An amendment offered by Senators Olympia […]
June 3, 2010 01:22 PM | Permalink | Investment fund managers have put forth outlandish arguments in defense of the “carried interest” loophole that allows them to pay taxes at lower rates than their secretaries. These arguments, which are gaining traction among some Senators, should be dismissed. Read the report. Want even more CTJ? Check […]
May 27, 2010 07:19 PM | Permalink | A recent paper from the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a lobby for multinational U.S. corporations, unfairly criticizes provisions to end abuses of the foreign tax credit. These provisions, which are included in H.R. 4213, the jobs and “extenders” bill, would make our corporate tax system fairer […]
May 20, 2010 06:17 PM | Permalink | While we have never supported the “tax extenders,” we believe that this is a more responsible approach than Congress used in the past, when the tax extenders were deficit-financed. We also believe that the loophole-closing provisions used to pay for them will enhance tax fairness. For these […]
May 13, 2010 11:56 AM | Permalink | As Congress prepares to take up legislation to boost small business job creation in the following weeks, some lawmakers argue that the legislation must extend parts of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the very rich. Two ideas along these lines are being discussed. One is to […]
May 13, 2010 11:50 AM | Permalink | Congress may be ready to close the “carried interest” loophole, which allows wealthy investment fund managers to pay taxes at lower rates than middle-income people. Carried interest is the share of profits that investors pay to compensate certain people for managing their money. The investment managers who […]