Author: Alex Welch

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 extension currently under discussion would ensure that this track record remains unsullied by success.

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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 2003-enacted 15-percent top tax rate on dividends and capital gains into 2009 and 2010. Under prior law, this tax break was slated to end after 2008. The two-year cost of the extension is officially estimated to be $51 billion—although the actual cost may be considerably larger.
• AMT relief. The bill extends and slightly enhances the temporary increase in the Alternative Minimum Tax exemption, which had expired at the end of 2005. This provision applies to 2006 only. The one-year cost of this change is $34 billion.

The bill also includes a number of special-interest tax breaks, such as a corporate tax loophole, worth almost $5 billion over the next five years, that allows companies such as General Electric and Citigroup to avoid taxes on U.S. profits that they have artificially shifted off-shore.

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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 new report shows that the wealthiest one percent of Americans own more than a third of the net wealth in America—more than the poorest ninety percent of Americans put together—and this inequality has grown worse over the past fifteen years.

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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 $26,204.
• The President’s income tax rate was 25.4 percent of his reported income. Without his tax-cut legislation, he would have paid 29.0 percent.
• Vice-President Dick Cheney’s 2005 income tax bill was reduced by $1,093,937 due to the Bush tax cuts.
• The Vice-President’s income tax rate was only 5.7 percent of his $9.1 million reported income. Without the Bush tax cuts, he would have paid 17.7 percent.

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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.

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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 filed in 2004 make it even clearer that Congressional tax writers are seeking to enrich a small group of the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else. Here is a quick overview of the new IRS data.

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March 22, 2006 12:58 PM | Permalink |

On January 1, 2006, temporary higher exemptions from the individual Alternative Minimum Tax were allowed to expire. These higher AMT exemptions were enacted to keep the Bush reductions in the regular income tax rates from pushing large numbers of people into the AMT. But continuation of these higher AMT exemptions is very costly, and our political leaders are adamantly unwilling to find a way to cover that cost (other than with more debt).

If Congress and the Bush Administration do not act to extend the temporary AMT tax breaks, the number of American taxpayers paying the AMT will jump by over 15 million in 2006. This analysis projects the number of 2006 AMT taxpayers in each state under current law (that is, with the same lower exemptions that were in force before 2003) and under the current House and Senate plans to extend AMT relief.

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March 16, 2006 05:29 PM | Permalink |

In 2003, Congress enacted—and President Bush signed into law—a new tax break that lowered the top federal income tax rate on capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent. This special lower capital gains rate, which is less than half of the 35 percent top tax rate on salaries and wages, is not scheduled to expire until the beginning of 2009—but tax writers in Congress are already pushing to extend this tax break. This analysis provides a quick reminder that the lion’s share of the benefits from this tax break go to a very small group of the wealthiest Americans:

• In 2005, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans received almost 70 percent of all long-term capital gains—and paid 72 percent of the tax on these capital gains.
• The wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers enjoyed 90 percent of the capital gains eligible for this special tax break.
• The poorest sixty percent of Americans, by contrast, collectively received just 2 percent of the capital gains eligible for the lower capital gains rates.

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March 14, 2006 03:52 PM | Permalink |

The Bush Treasury Department today published charts that seem to show that President Bush’s huge tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2002 failed to help the economy.

The tendentious report, “Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Economic Effects of Cutting Dividend and Capital Gains Taxes in 2003,” asserts that the 2003 tax cuts were the key to an improved economy in recent years. To prove that highly debatable point, the report presents charts showing how poorly the economy performed during President Bush’s first 2½ years in office, compared to more recently.

“Previously, the President had touted his 2001 and 2002 tax cuts as economically useful, but he now seems to have abandoned that claim,” noted Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. “Presumably, there will be further revisions in the President’s arguments as economic events unfold in the future.”

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January 26, 2006 02:23 PM | Permalink |

The Congressional Budget Office issued new budget figures today that project $8.5 trillion in federal borrowing over the fiscal 2006–2016 period if President Bush’s tax and spending policies are maintained.

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