Tag: Archive

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 truth, as a close look at the administration’s own new estimates in its July 11 “Mid-session Review” reveals.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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, the national debt, including amounts owed to the Social Security Trust Fund, will balloon by $3 trillion. The cost of this borrowing binge will ultimately come out of taxpayers’ pockets, either through spending cuts or future tax hikes.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 in tax policy — in order to get deficits under control.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 bill to encourage more Senators to support this legislation. One of these provisions, a special capital gains tax break for timber companies, would likely result in profitable timber companies paying no tax. According to the Washington Post, the provision is designed to sway the votes of two Democratic Senators from Washington State (a major timber-producing state) who opposed estate tax repeal in last week’s Senate vote.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 will expire. Will the resulting “pre-Bush” estate tax be sufficiently generous to American family farms? This CTJ issue brief evaluates the special estate tax breaks for farmers that existed before the 2001 Bush tax cuts were enacted—and will exist again in 2011 if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire as currently scheduled.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 the vast majority of Americans. The failure of today’s cloture vote sends an important signal to Congress and the Bush Administration that Americans are concerned about the growing inequality of wealth in America—and that we believe the estate tax can play an important role in preventing the creation of a new American aristocracy.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 the Internal Revenue Service, describing estate tax payments in each state for 2004, show that more than ever, the estate tax is virtually irrelevant for most Americans—raising the question of why Congress is so intent on repealing a tax that affects so few estates.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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 started with a reasonable estimate of the effects of the capital gains and dividends tax cut by the Joint Committee on Taxation. The implied (but unpublished) JCT figures appear to be similar to those published by Citizens for Tax Justice — which is to be expected since they were calculated on very similar computer tax models.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!

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.

Read the Full Report

Want even more CTJ? Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Youtube!