Author: tarek

Information is starting to trickle out of the White House about the budget proposals that the President is to release on Wednesday of next week. The proposal will be controversial because it includes cuts in Social Security and Medicare spending. Here’s what we know so far about the tax proposals in the plan.

1. It appears that President Obama will propose less in new revenue than the $975 billion called for in the budget resolution approved by the Democratic majority in the Senate. This seems very ill-advised, as we have already noted that the Senate resolution would not even raise enough revenue to pay for the level of spending that Ronald Reagan presided over. As the Washington Post explains,

The budget is more conservative than Obama’s earlier proposals, which called for $1.6 trillion in new taxes and fewer cuts to health and domestic spending programs. Obama is seeking to raise $580 billion in tax revenue by limiting deductions for the wealthy and closing loopholes for certain industries like oil and gas.

This revenue would be used to reduce the deficit.

The President’s proposal will have some additional revenue-raising proposals, “increased tobacco taxes and more limited retirement accounts for the wealthy that are meant to pay for new spending.” It is unclear how much those additional proposals would raise, but it appears that the total new revenue would be below what the Senate budget resolution calls for.

2. The vast majority of the President’s proposed new revenue would come from his proposal to limit the tax savings of each dollar of certain deductions and exclusions claimed by wealthy taxpayers to 28 cents. A recent CTJ report breaks down the composition of the tax expenditures limited by this proposal and how some taxpayers would be affected.

3. One of the new revenue-raising proposals from the President that would pay for new spending is a limit on individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for the wealthy that CTJ proposed in its recent working paper on revenue proposals. We noted that IRAs provide a tax subsidy to encourage retirement saving, which Congress surely never intended to allow Mitt Romney to save $87 million tax-free.  

The Washington Post reports Obama’s plan would

… also seek to generate revenue by limiting how much wealthy individuals can accrue in their tax-retirement accounts. Such accounts would be capped at $3 million in 2013 dollars — which officials say is enough to finance a $205,000 a year income.  

We’ll have more analysis as we learn more.

Two new analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice demonstrate that the richest Americans still are not shouldering a disproportionate share of taxes and that the poor are still not avoiding them, despite stories that are commonly told every year around Tax Day.

The first is Who Pays Taxes in America in 2013?, a fact sheet we release each year. It examines all the taxes paid by Americans (all federal, state and local taxes) and finds that people in all income groups do pay taxes (despite claims to the contrary by Mitt Romney and others) and that the tax system overall is just barely progressive.

The second analysis is our six-page report called New Tax Laws in Effect in 2013 Have Modest Progressive Impact. This goes into more detail and explains that the tax code has not changed in 2013 despite recent headlines about unprecedented taxes on the rich.

For example, Americans in all income groups are paying more than they would pay if Congress had just extended the tax laws in effect in 2012, but the share of taxes paid by the top one percent has risen only slightly. The richest one percent, who will receive 21.9 percent of America’s income in 2013, will pay 24 percent of all the taxes in 2013. If, instead of enacting the “fiscal cliff” deal that allowed some tax cuts for the rich to expire, Congress had just extended the 2012 tax laws, then the richest one percent would pay 23.1 percent of all the taxes in 2013.

In other words, the “fiscal cliff” deal made our tax system slightly – not dramatically –more progressive.

Since January, we’ve brought you updates as best we could about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s controversial tax swap plan, but details remained elusive. Finally, late last week, the Governor released enough information – including a newly calculated, bigger sales tax rate increase – and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) was able to complete a full analysis of the Governor’s tax plan. The centerpiece of the Jindal plan is the outright repeal of the state’s personal and corporate income and franchise taxes. These tax cuts would be paid for primarily by increasing the state sales tax rate from 4 percent to 6.25 percent, and expanding the base of the tax to include a wide variety of previously untaxed services and goods.

ITEP’s analysis shows that, if fully implemented in 2013, the plan would increase taxes on the poorest sixty percent of Louisianans overall, while providing large tax cuts for the best-off Louisiana taxpayers. In fact, ITEP found that the poorest 20 percent of Louisianans would see a net tax increase averaging $283, or 2.4 percent of their income, while the very best-off Louisianans would see a tax cut averaging almost $30,000, or 2.5 percent of this group’s total income.

Louisiana Department of Revenue (DOR) Executive Counsel Tim Barfield continues to insist that all Louisianians will be better off under the Governor’s plan. But, as ITEP’s report points out, DOR’s estimates are flawed: they only include the impact of taxes paid directly by individuals and they ignore the impact of taxes paid initially by businesses. This approach presents an incomplete picture of how the Jindal plan would affect Louisianans, though, because a substantial share of the current sales tax, and the large majority of the expanded sales tax base the Governor proposes, would be paid initially by businesses. Economists generally agree that these business sales taxes are ultimately passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Louisianans themselves aren’t buying the Governor’s numbers either. His tax swap plan has the support of only 27 percent of Louisianans – and that was before he upped the sales tax increase even further.

Read ITEP’s full analysis of Govenor Jindal’s tax plan here.

Just in time for Tax Day 2013, our quarterly newsletter Just Taxes is arriving in mailboxes this week. This edition features original articles discussing the fallacies of anti-tax legislation in state legislatures, Facebook’s tax avoidance schemes, the release of ITEP’s new report, Who Pays? and highlights of ITEP and CTJ’s recent press coverage. Starting this year, we are putting back issues of Just Taxes online, and you can now browse editions from the past nine years.  

Just Taxes is a provided as a service to our current donors – who make our work possible – so we’re not making this special content available until six months after publication. (The current issue, for example, will be posted in October.) So to make sure you receive the most up-to-date edition, please make a contribution to CTJ or you can choose to make a tax-deductible contribution to ITEP.  And thank you for all the ways you show support for our work.

The largest revenue-raising proposal put forth by President Obama, which is expected to be among the proposals the White House plans to release next week, would limit the tax savings of each dollar of certain deductions and exclusions to 28 cents. CTJ’s new report on the President’s proposal examines who would be affected and also breaks down the composition of the tax expenditures limited under the proposal.

For example, the report finds that Obama’s proposal, which would only apply to married couples with AGI above $250,000 and singles with AGI above $200,000, would affect just 2.4 percent of taxpayers in 2014. The deduction for state and local taxes would make up over a third of the tax expenditures limited, and the deduction for state and local taxes along with the charitable deduction would, together, make up over half of the tax expenditures limited under the proposal.

Read the report.

Are economically disadvantaged families in the US likely to reverse their fortunes anytime soon? Not according to a new report by the Brookings Institution, which found that growing economic disparities between Americans are becoming increasingly permanent and irreversible. In other words, the study confirms that disadvantaged Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to move up the income ladder, while at the same time the position of the well-off is increasingly secure.

Brookings also found that between 1987 and 2009 the US tax system only “partially mitigated” the increase in income inequality and that it was not enough to “sufficiently alter its broadly increasing trend.” This result is not all that surprising given that the overall (combined state and federal) tax system is barely progressive, meaning that it can only have a small redistributive impact.

While many countries have taken dramatic steps to reduce income inequality, the US has allowed income inequality to grow so extreme that it now has the fourth highest level of income inequality in the developed world. Looking at the low end of the scale, the US Census Bureau found that over 46 million (PDF), or 1 in 6, Americans were below the poverty line in 2011 (the most recent year for which data is available).

But don’t expect a revolution just yet. Most Americans are wholly unaware of how off track our economic system has gotten. For example, as the viral video “Wealth Inequality in America” explains, there is a huge disconnect between the actual distribution of wealth, the distribution of wealth as the public perceives it, and the distribution that the public believes is desirable.

According to the study (PDF) on which the video was based, Americans believe that the top 20 percent hold only 58 percent of the country’s wealth and that under an ideal system, the top 20 percent would own just 32 percent of the wealth. The reality, however, is that the top 20 percent actually own about 84 percent of the country’s wealth. Consider, for example, that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune alone own as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.

One of the best ways to combat rising economic inequality and increase economic mobility would be to enact progressive tax reforms and use the additional revenue raised to pay for critical investments in education, healthcare, and other areas that are needed to improve the economic mobility of lower and middle income Americans.

Here’s some happy news: a recent poll finds that just 27 percent of Louisianans support Governor Bobby Jindal’s tax swap, and that’s before the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released its latest analysis showing that the poorest 60 percent of taxpayers in Louisiana would see a tax hike as a result of the Governor’s plan.

A robotics company based in Nevada recently decided to abandon the state’s allegedly “business friendly” environment in favor of Silicon Valley in California, where there are better trained employees and plenty of deep pocketed investors. Nevada does not levy a personal or corporate income tax, but as Romotive founder Keller Rinaudo explains: “It was not a short-term economic decision … We have to find experienced roboticists, and that really only exists in a few places in the world, and California is one of them.”

Maryland’s gas tax will be increased and reformed starting July 1 under a bill just sent to Governor Martin O’Malley by the state’s legislature.  This year’s increase will be something less than 4 cents per gallon, but the tax will now rise each year alongside inflation and gas prices, as recommended by ITEP. ITEP showed that even with the increase, Maryland’s gas tax rate will still remain below its historical average and be less than the state probably needs.

Here’s an interesting story in the Minnesota Star Tribune about how Governor Dayton’s tax plan would impact the wealthiest Minnesotans. While opponents resort to the usual tax-hikes-kill-jobs refrain, Wayne Cox of Minnesotans for Tax Justice notes, “Economists believe keeping teachers and firefighters on the payroll is at least three times more helpful to the economy than keeping income tax rates at the top the same.”

Tax cuts for opposite ends of the income spectrum are getting opposite treatment in Maine and Arkansas. This week, Maine lawmakers rejected a bill that would cut taxes on capital gains (which heavily benefits wealthy taxpayers) and approved an increase in the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) (PDF), which amounts to a tax cut to low- and moderate-income families. But last week in Arkansas, a House panel approved a cut in taxes on capital gains while passing up an opportunity to enact a state EITC.

Idaho lawmakers have opted for a dramatically scaled back tax cut on business equipment.  Rather than repealing the business personal property tax entirely as Governor Butch Otter had proposed, the House and Senate have sent him a bill that exempts the first $100,000 of property from the tax.  This change eliminates the tax for 90 percent of Idaho businesses while costing the treasury a fraction of the amount of outright repeal.

Even with the bill’s $20 million price tag, the Associated Press (AP) reasonably described it as a victory for counties and schools that would have been hit hard if the tax were repealed.  The AP also called it a “setback” for big businesses’ major lobby—the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI).  IACI has pledged to continue lobbying for full repeal next year.

Had the business personal property tax been repealed in full, the biggest winner would have been Idaho Power, which would have seen its tax bill drop by anywhere from $10.5 to $15.3 million per year. Our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), helped put this property tax cut into context with a report explaining that Idaho Power already pays nothing in state corporate income taxes.  Looking at nationwide state corporate tax payments, ITEP showed that from 2007 to 2011, the company actually collected a $7 million state tax rebate despite earning $623 million in profits. That amounts to an overall effective tax rate of negative 1.1 percent.

While it’s discouraging that lawmakers prioritized cutting taxes this session on the heels of last year’s regressive income tax cut, the decision to keep the business personal property tax on the books is a welcome bit of fiscal sanity.

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.”