December 14, 2006 12:56 PM | Permalink | Keeping the individual Alternative Minimum Tax from affecting tens of millions of innocent taxpayers is a problem that has bedeviled Congress ever since it passed President Bush’s big cuts in the regular income tax back in 2001 without simultaneously adjusting the AMT. Over the past several years, […]
November 30, 2006 04:04 PM | Permalink | Recently, there has been renewed interest in the idea of raising or eliminating the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax and self-employment tax. This paper evaluates the effects of such a change and examines some of the issues it raises. Read the report […]
November 16, 2006 01:46 PM | Permalink | Control over the House and Senate will change when the new Congress begins in January, but one thing remains the same: members of Congress of both parties still love to shower corporate interests with targeted tax breaks to encourage campaign donations. A package of extensions for a […]
October 20, 2006 04:05 PM | Permalink | On October 11, the Bush administration announced that the fiscal 2006 budget deficit is $248 billion. In reality the budget deficit is much larger. Including the $186 billion borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund, it is $434 billion for fiscal 2006. That brings total federal borrowing […]
October 16, 2006 03:39 PM | Permalink | Over the past six years, Congress and President Bush have made major changes to the federal tax system, dramatically affecting tax fairness, revenues and budget deficits. This Congressional Tax Report Card looks at the five key tax votes in the House and Senate that have produced these […]
October 13, 2006 03:41 PM | Permalink | After half a dozen major tax cuts in the first six years of the Bush administration—many of which have different phase-in dates, and almost all of which sunset completely after 2010—you need a scorecard to keep track of which cuts take effect each year. Here’s your scorecard: […]
October 10, 2006 03:43 PM | Permalink | State Fact Sheets and Analysis See Full Report Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!
August 30, 2006 01:47 PM | Permalink | A fellow from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the big accounting, lobbying and corporate public relations firm, called me the other day to talk about a PwC project called the “Total Tax Contribution framework,” which he described as “an effort to enhance transparency in corporate tax reporting.” He buttered me up […]
August 4, 2006 02:06 PM | Permalink | Citizens for Tax Justice congratulates the U.S. Senate on its decision to reject the effort to hand a new $62 billion a year estate tax break to a small group of America’s wealthiest families. A sufficient minority of Senators has said “no” to another expensive tax giveaway […]
August 1, 2006 04:07 PM | Permalink | The latest budget-busting tax cut passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 28 is likely to be considered by the Senate this week. The bill, HR 4, would make permanent so-called “savings incentives” tax breaks that benefit higher-income families who need the least help in […]
July 14, 2006 02:24 PM | Permalink | What is the United States trying to do when it comes to taxing multinational corporations? Companies that do business only in the United States have to pay federal income taxes on their profits (at least as the tax code defines “profits”). We want multinational corporations—both American-owned and […]
July 11, 2006 02:18 PM | Permalink | Having slashed personal income taxes, primarily on the wealthy, over the past six years, the Bush administration would like the public to believe that tax revenues are nonetheless doing just fine, and that the budget deficit is not really a problem. Nothing could be further from the […]
June 29, 2006 03:44 PM | Permalink | Last month, President George W. Bush signed into law another round of tax cuts. The latest cuts provide temporary capital gains and dividends tax cuts and AMT relief. But these tax cuts are being paid for entirely with borrowed money. In fact, over the fiscal 2002-07 period, […]
June 29, 2006 02:21 PM | Permalink | Despite the fact that tax breaks enacted since 2001 are responsible for almost half of the U.S. federal budget deficit, President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress claim that they need new budget rules that will encourage deep cuts in federal programs — but mandate no changes […]
June 22, 2006 02:08 PM | Permalink | Last week, Senate Republicans failed in their effort to permanently repeal the federal estate tax. Now tax writers in the House of Representatives are working to enact “compromise” legislation that would cost almost as much as full repeal—and GOP leaders are adding “sweeteners” to the estate tax […]
June 9, 2006 02:09 PM | Permalink | The failure of a procedural vote this week in the U.S. Senate means that Republican efforts to make permanent the Bush administration’s 2001 estate tax cuts have failed— for the moment. If nothing else is done, in 2011 the federal estate tax cuts pushed through by Bush […]
June 8, 2006 02:10 PM | Permalink | Earlier today, a procedural vote in the United States Senate failed by a 57-41 vote, ensuring that the federal estate tax will not be fully repealed. Citizens for Tax Justice congratulates the U.S. Senators who decided today that estate tax repeal is not in the interest of […]
June 5, 2006 02:12 PM | Permalink | Republican Senate leaders are pushing to enact permanent repeal of the federal estate tax, a move that would cost nearly $1 trillion over the first full decade. Meanwhile, other Senators are seeking a “compromise” that would cost nearly as much as full repeal. But new data from […]
May 18, 2006 03:45 PM | Permalink | Congressional Republicans are now trying to claim that the tax cut they recently enacted on capital gains and dividends actually favored low-income Americans. The May 17 release from the Senate Finance Committee is an exercise in outrageous statistical chicanery. To defend their preposterous conclusion, GOP lawmakers apparently […]
May 12, 2006 03:50 PM | Permalink | Even as the ink dries on a new federal tax cut for wealthy investors, Congressional tax writers are poised to extend a controversial, recently-expired corporate tax break, the Research and Experimentation (R&E) Tax Credit. The R&E credit has no proven track record of encouraging corporate research—and the […]
May 12, 2006 03:47 PM | Permalink | Yesterday, Congress completed action on a tax bill that offers large new tax breaks to the wealthy, but virtually nothing to average taxpayers. The two key elements of the bill, which President Bush will sign, are: Tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. The bill extends the […]
May 12, 2006 02:13 PM | Permalink | Republican leaders in Congress are poised for a new push to repeal the federal estate tax—even as a new report from the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) reminds us of the critical role the estate tax plays in reducing the concentration of wealth in a few hands. The […]
April 18, 2006 03:49 PM | Permalink | On Good Friday, April 14, 2006, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney released their federal income tax returns for 2005. An analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice of the White House figures shows: Due to the 2001-05 Bush tax cuts, the President’s 2005 income tax was reduced by […]
April 5, 2006 03:51 PM | Permalink | A new analysis of IRS income tax data for 2003 shows that the tax cuts for capital gains and dividends enacted that year almost doubled the size of the Bush income tax cuts enacted in 2001-03 for the wealthiest Americans. Read the Full Report Want even more […]
April 4, 2006 02:14 PM | Permalink | Congressional leaders are once again pushing for permanent repeal of the federal estate tax. This clamor for immediate action is odd enough given that the currently scheduled estate tax phase-out won’t revert back to prior law until 2011. But newly released IRS data on estate tax returns […]