Author: tarek

Our roads, bridges, and transit systems are in decline, and unless lawmakers are cured of their anti-tax phobia, the “fix” could come from education cuts in some states and even more deficit spending at the federal level.

It’s against this backdrop that our friends at ITEP released a first of its kind report on gas taxes last week, titled “Building a Better Gas Tax.”  In the report, ITEP shows that state governments are losing $10 billion every year because of their failure to plan for predictable increases in transportation construction costs. Meantime, much of the federal government’s contribution to states’ transport budgets is being paid for with borrowed money because our national gas tax is also stagnant, costing us $23 billion annually. 

Fortunately, there are glimmers of hope that this problem might be addressed responsibly, at least in some states.  Most notable are Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where influential lawmakers are planning to push for long overdue gas tax increases when legislative sessions start next month.

By contrast, Oklahoma and Virginia are each led by governors who have announced their intention to cut education funding in order to pay for road and bridge repairs.

ITEP’s report recommends that lawmakers follow the path being considered in Maryland and other states: an immediate gas tax increase, coupled with reform to ensure that the tax can hold up over time alongside rising asphalt and construction costs.  ITEP’s report also urges that states enact low-income relief to offset gas tax payments made by those least able to afford the tax.

The report has already been greeted warmly by the transportation policy community, and has received significant press coverage (and praise from editorial boards) in a number of states where gas taxes are sure to be most relevant in the months ahead, including Maryland, Michigan, and Virginia.

We’ll keep you updated on all of these debates as they develop, but in the meantime we encourage you to check out the report at www.itepnet.org/bettergastax and see how your state compares.

Photo of Gas Station via Future Atlas Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

UPDATE: Candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on December 22 that he does not intend to release his tax returns, even if he becomes his party’s nominee. Watch CTJ’s Rebecca Wilkins explain to ABC News Brian Ross what Romney’s tax returns would show about his offshore investments and “carried interest” income. ABC video at this link.

End the Loophole Allowing Romney and other Fund Managers to have “Carried Interest” Taxed as “Capital Gains”

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s personal wealth, estimated at $190 to $250 million, has been in the news a lot lately, including the sweet retirement deal he negotiated with Bain Capital, the private equity firm he used to head. The stories confirm CTJ director Bob McIntyre’s comments to Time Magazine that Romney’s multi-million dollar income is likely taxed at the special low 15 percent rate imposed on dividends and long-term capital gains.

This makes Romney a good poster child for the “Buffett Rule,” the principle that millionaires should not pay lower effective tax rates than middle-income people. One step towards implementing the Buffet Rule is to close the loophole that allows “carried interest” (the fund managers’ share of the deal they get as compensation) to be taxed at the 15 percent rate even though it is not truly capital gain.

Much of Romney’s income that is taxed at that super-low rate is actually compensation in the form of a “carried interest” in the private equity deals of Bain Capital. While CEO’s, actors, and athletes with multi-million dollar salaries, bonuses, or stock options pay income tax rates of 35 percent (and payroll taxes) on their compensation, managers of private equity firms, hedge funds, and other investment funds pay only 15 percent income tax (and no payroll tax) on their share of the funds’ profits that they get in exchange for their management services. Even some managers who benefit from the low rate admit it’s not justified.

Since this loophole benefits those who make millions, hundreds of millions and sometimes over a billion dollars in a single year, it is truly a case of the richest one percent being subsidized by the other 99 percent who pay higher taxes or get less in services to pay for this tax break.

Various proposals have been offered to close this loophole and, in the last Congress, one of those measures passed the House (three times!) but didn’t make it through the Senate. Republicans and many Democrats in the Senate claimed that the loophole somehow helps encourage investment in poor neighborhoods, helps minorities, small businesses and even cancer patients.

The truth is that it does not encourage any type of investment in any part of the country because it does not benefit the people putting up money for investment. It merely allows those who manage this money to pretend that they have invested their own cash and thus receive the capital gains tax break that is ostensibly in place to encourage investment.

Now that this loophole has the face of a very wealthy presidential candidate on it, perhaps the American public will start to notice and demand that it be eliminated. If you believe the tax code shouldn’t favor the richest 1 percent over the 99 percent, here’s a place to start: Close the Romney Loophole.

Despite receiving increased attention after becoming the new GOP presidential frontrunner, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continued his blunder-filled forays into tax policy at the ABC News Iowa Republican primary debate last Saturday.

The most outstanding of the Gingrich tax policy foibles in the debate was a flat-out lie about his past support of a cap-and-trade system to deal with climate change.

Responding to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s charge that he supported cap-and-trade, Gingrich replied “I oppose cap-and-trade” and went on to say that he helped “defeat it in the Senate.” In reality however, Gingrich has said in the past that he would “strongly support” cap-and-trade and has repeatedly backed similar efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Gingrich’s attempt to hide his past position on this issue highlights how anti-tax absolutists have pushed the entire Republican presidential field away from any policy that could increase revenue, even if it would help prevent a climate crisis. Economists agree that a cap and trade system, which would raise revenue, has the same effect as a direct tax on carbon-producing activities. Of course, Gingrich has tried to rewrite history before, and has been called out by CTJ’s director Bob McIntyre.

Gingrich also went on the offensive against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, criticizing Romney’s proposal to make capital gains tax-free only for taxpayers with income under $200,000 whereas Gingrich would make them tax-free for all taxpayers.  

What Gingrich failed to mention is how he would offset the $1.3 trillion revenue loss that would result or that the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers alone would receive three-quarters of the benefits. A fairer and more sustainable tax policy would actually be to end the special low income tax rate for capital gains so that they are treated like any other form of income.

As the new GOP frontrunner, Gingrich will quickly learn that people are paying close attention to his tax policy pronouncements, and CTJ will provide the missing facts whenever needed.

After long opposing the extension of a tax on millionaires supported by 72 percent of New Yorkers, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo partially reversed himself and proposed a plan that would raise more revenue from the very wealthy and make the state’s tax system less regressive.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the New York Senate and General Assembly approved Cuomo’s plan to raise taxes on joint filers making more than $2 million, while cutting them for those making under $300,000.

The move by Cuomo represented a stunning reversal of his pledge to oppose any tax increases, which he backed up in March by effectively killing the extension of New York’s popular millionaire’s surcharge.

For his part, Cuomo explains his reversal by noting that the state faces a $3.5 billion deficit and that as a result “there is not an intelligent or productive way to close the current gap without generating revenue.” The new tax plan will raise $1.9 billion, of which $1.5 billion is slated to go directly to deficit reduction.

Cuomo’s decision also comes after months of increasing pressure to extend the temporary millionaires’ tax from the New York Democratic Party establishment, Occupy Wall Street protestors, and overwhelming majorities of New Yorkers generally.

Compared to the tax rates that would be in effect if New York simply allowed the millionaires’ surcharge to expire, the tax deal reduces taxes for joint filers making under $300,000, keeps them the same for joint filers making between $300,000 and $2 million dollars, and increases the rate by almost 2 percent on joint filers making more than $2 million dollars. However, supporters of the millionaires’ surcharge point out that a straight extension of that provision would have raised more than twice as much revenue from the wealthy.

In any case, Cuomo’s tax plan should be applauded and will definitely benefit a wide-swath of New Yorkers. We only wish that anti-tax New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would follow suit and reinstate a millionaires’ tax in his state.

Photo of Governor Andrew Cuomo via Gov Andrew Cuomo Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The graph below compares the impacts of the Democrats’ proposed payroll tax holiday with a tax policy that is more progressive (reviving the Making Work Pay Credit) and a policy that is far more regressive (the Bush tax cuts, which are already in effect through 2012). Senator Jon Kyl, the second highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, now says he would agree to extend the payroll tax cut only if Democrats agreed to extend the far more regressive policy, the Bush tax cuts.

These figures disturbed us because even the Democrats’ proposal is not really all that progressive. If the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax paid by workers is reduced to 3.1 percent as Democratic leaders propose, the richest fifth of taxpayers will receive $83 billion in 2012 while the poorest fifth of taxpayers will receive just $7 billion.

Apparently that’s not regressive enough for Jon Kyl. The blog Think Progress notes that on Monday, Senator Kyl said on the Senate floor that when the payroll tax cut was enacted for one year at the end of 2010, that “was part of an overall agreement in which we said we will extend all of the existing tax rates — the so-called Bush tax cuts… we would extend this temporary tax holiday from the payroll tax cut, we would extend all of those. And I supported that… Now if we can do that again, I’m all for it. I’ll support the extension of the payroll tax holiday.” 

The graph shows that the Bush tax cuts in 2012 will provide the richest fifth of taxpayers with $231 billion and will provide the poorest fifth of taxpayers with just $3 billion. For more, read our short report on these figures.

It would require a full-time staff person to respond to all the inaccuracies we regularly see in Washington Post’s “The Fact Checker” column by Glenn Kessler, but an episode from this week really stands out.

Kessler attempts to pick at a segment of President Obama’s speech on Tuesday in Kansas, during which he said,

“I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country…”

Kessler admits that “it is correct that most of the benefits of the tax cuts flowed to the wealthy” but then writes that Obama “should not suggest that the Bush tax cuts were only aimed at the wealthy, since that is not correct.”

In truth, the Bush tax cuts were “aimed at the wealthy,” and a few bits and scraps were dropped to low- and middle-income people to distract inattentive people like Glenn Kessler from this fact. We estimated that by 2010, when the Bush tax cuts were fully phased in, about 52 percent of the benefits went to the richest five percent of taxpayers and just under 75 percent of the benefits went to the richest fifth of taxpayers. Less than 13 percent of the benefits went to the bottom three fifths of taxpayers. Can anyone seriously doubt that the Bush tax cuts were “aimed at the wealthy”?

It’s true that they are slightly less aimed at the wealthy today because the part of the Bush tax cuts that repealed the estate tax was partially extended, rather than fully extended, in the December 2010 deal that extended all the tax cuts for two years. We projected the distribution of the tax cuts in the event that they’re extended again in 2013 (including the estate tax cut currently in place) and the figures are not much different from our 2010 figure.

Kessler also complains that, “The Bush tax cuts have been roundly criticized for being inefficient and poorly designed, but it is a stretch for Obama to blame slow job growth on the tax cuts. There are many factors that affect job growth…”

This actually seems like a misinterpretation of what President Obama said. The President seems to be making the point that the sole Republican response to economic downturns is to cut taxes, particularly tax cuts for the wealthy investor class, and this doesn’t get the job done. Research backs this up. Economic growth was lower after these types of tax cuts were enacted in the Reagan and George W. Bush years than after the tax hikes enacted during the Clinton years.

This is not to say that President Obama or Democratic leaders have done a stellar job on economic policy. Kessler rightly points out that President Obama’s tax plan, which was filibustered by the Republican minority in the Senate last year, would have extended most of the Bush tax cuts even while allowing those going exclusively to the very rich to expire. Still, this doesn’t change the fact that the Bush tax cuts were “aimed at the wealthy” and failed to help our economy in any of the ways that their proponents promised they would.

On Sunday, the second highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, Jon Kyl, said, “The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it.” Asked why he opposes letting the Bush tax cuts end for the rich or imposing a surcharge on millionaires while also opposing this particular measure to keep taxes low, he replied, “The best way to hurt economic growth is to impose more taxes on the people who do the hiring. As a result, the Republicans have said, ‘Don’t raise the existing tax rates on those who do the hiring.’”

In other words, keep taxes low for the rich. A new report from CTJ shows that the Bush tax cuts supported by Senator Kyl will provide $231 billion in benefits to the richest fifth of taxpayers in 2012 and just $3 billion to the poorest fifth of taxpayers during that same year.

The payroll tax cut proposed by President Obama and Senate Democrats is more evenly distributed but is not particularly progressive. The CTJ report shows that it would provide $83 billion to the richest fifth of taxpayers and $7 billion to the poorest fifth of taxpayers.

Most economists agree that government spending measures are the most effective way to put more money in the hands of consumers to spend and thereby reduce unemployment. But if lawmakers insist on using tax policy instead, they should enact tax cuts that are targeted to those low- and middle-income consumers who are likely to immediately spend any new money they receive.

The Senate Democrats’ payroll tax cut proposal, which would be offset by a surcharge on millionaires (see related story), won a majority of votes yesterday (50 Democrats and one Republican voted in favor) but was blocked by the remaining Senators. Republican leaders offered their own payroll tax cut that would be offset by cutting back federal government positions and pay, but this did not even receive support from a majority of Republicans in the chamber.

The CTJ report points out that a better option would be to revive the Making Work Pay Credit that expired at the end of last year, which has been discussed by some Senators but ignored by leaders of both parties.

The report finds that if the Making Work Pay Credit was in effect in 2012, the richest fifth of taxpayers would receive $11 billion while the poorest fifth of taxpayers would receive $7 billion, making it a less costly and more targeted tax cut.

State-by-State Figures Included

The millionaire surcharge that would have offset the cost of Senate Democrats’ proposed payroll tax cut would have affected only one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers in the majority of states, and in no state would those affected pay more than an average of 2.5 percent of their income under the surcharge, as explained in a new fact sheet from CTJ.

Nationally, just 0.2 percent of taxpayers would be affected by the surcharge and those affected would pay 2.1 percent of their income, on average under the proposal.

The surcharge would be 3.25 percent of the portion of any taxpayer’s adjusted gross income (AGI) in excess of $1 million starting in 2013. This means that a taxpayer with AGI of $1.1 million in a given year would pay a surcharge equal to 3.25 percent of $100,000, which is $3,250 (less than one-third of one percent of the taxpayers’ AGI). Taxpayers with AGI below $1 million would be unaffected by the surcharge.

Of the 49 Senators who blocked the Democrats’ payroll tax proposal yesterday, the surcharge motivated many of them. Others blocked the proposal because they objected to the idea of a payroll tax cut in principle. Most Republican Senators actually voted against the version of the payroll tax brought to the floor by GOP leaders, which would have been offset with reductions in federal government jobs and compensation. (See related story about CTJ’s figures on the payroll tax cut.)

Massachusetts Democratic Representative Barney Frank made waves on Monday with the announcement that he will not seek reelection in 2012. During his 30 years serving in the House of Representative, Rep. Frank has become well known for being the most prominent gay politician in the United States, his leadership role on the House Financial Service Committee during the height of the financial crisis, and his infamously cheeky remarks on a wide variety of different issues.

Rep. Frank is less known for his many years of service standing up for good tax policy. During the George W. Bush years for example, his record on working against the irresponsible Bush tax cuts earned him a straight A’s on our Congressional Report Card. In fact, just last year Rep. Frank stood up against pressure from Republicans and the White House to become one of the strongest Democratic voices opposing the deal that extended the Bush tax cuts for two more years.

Because of his strong advocacy over the years, we were proud to have Rep. Frank as an honorary chairman of our 30th Anniversary Celebration a couple years back. We could not think of any better way to honor Rep. Frank than to share two of our favorite quotes of his on tax policy:

• “Tax cuts are fun, but I never saw a tax cut put out a fire. I never saw a tax cut make a bridge” Barney Frank, MSNBC, August 1, 2011
• “Remember that our debt crisis began when someone decided to get the joint prize, Nobel Prize, for economics and fiction by putting forward the theory that you could finance two wars with five tax cuts. That’s what put us in the hole.” Barney Frank, CNBC, January 29, 2011

Photo of Barney Frank via World Economic Forum Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Cyber Monday 2011 was the biggest online shopping day in the history of the Internet, shattering all previous years’ records. Online shopping the Monday after Thanksgiving was up 33% over last year, with consumers spending $1.25 billion on e-purchases.

Almost all states require local mom and pop stores, as well as big box retailers down the road, to collect sales taxes on the purchases you make.  But when it comes to out-of-state online retailers, states lack that power due to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling.

West Virginia, for example, has done the math and figures online shopping costs the state $100 million a year. A Florida lawmaker estimates Cyber Monday alone cost her state $40 million this year.

The convenience of online shopping is undeniable, but it’s impossible to overlook the glaring problem it presents for state sales tax collections, as highlighted by Cyber Monday. See our recent op-ed in New York Newsday for the whole story.

The federal government has been dragging its feet on requiring Amazon.com, Overstock.com and other online retailers to live up to exactly the same standard as brick and mortar stores.  But a Capitol Hill hearing this week is giving some hope that Congress will soon consider legislation that overrides the 1992 court ruling and paves the way for states to collect sales tax revenues.

There are big dollars at stake for state governments and a big price disadvantage for local businesses if the laws don’t change. State budgets are bearing the real burden of a three-year recession, and tax revenues lost to cyber shopping really add up.

For all of our sakes, let’s hope Congress acts quickly!

Photo of Shopping Online via USA.gov Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0