We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
In an excellent op-ed, Jason Bailey of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy makes the case for real tax reform in Kentucky, and that means a tax code that can raise revenues to keep Kentucky thriving. He explains that after years of budget cuts and a sluggish economy, the Bluegrass State cannot make public investments needed to recover economically and get on a sustainable fiscal footing. Bailey lists the various stop-gap measures lawmakers have already deployed and concludes they are all out of tricks. With a good roadmap to reform available, Bailey writes, it’s time to begin that hard work.
This otherwise fine article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, about competing tax proposals in Missouri, provided online readers with a calculator – that utterly failed in calculating how those proposals would affect taxpayers. The state policy team at ITEP quickly responded with a Letter to the Editor pointing out that “the tax calculator omits some key information about who wins and who loses under these plans.”
Tax policy is taking center stage in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli is reportedly in the process of designing a major tax cut on which to campaign. While precise details have yet to be announced, a 20 percent cut in the personal income tax and elimination of the corporate income tax altogether are under consideration. Watch this space for a full analysis of the plan’s impact on Virginians at different income levels once more details are announced.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has a new report that clarifies a lot of misconceptions about the existence of fraud in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). For starters, CBPP explains that most EITC overpayments “reflect unintentional errors, not fraud.” On top of that, it turns out that IRS studies of EITC overpayments suffer from “significant methodological problems that likely cause them to overstate the actual EITC overpayments.”