Tag: Archive

February 27, 1989 05:20 PM | Permalink | Restoring Fairness to Iowa TaxesIowa’s current tax system is seriously regressive. Instead of taxing according to ability to pay, Iowa heaps onerous burdens on low- and middle-income families while asking the richest citizens to contribute a significantly smaller share.This inequitable tax situation results from a combination of imperfect tax policies and missed opportunities. The passage of the federal Tax Reform Act of 1986 gave Iowa a golden opportunity to improve the fairness of its tax system. By following the federal lead, the state could have made its system more progressive and made the well-off begin to pay their fair share.

Restoring Fairness to Iowa Taxes

Iowa’s current tax system is seriously regressive. Instead of taxing according to ability to pay, Iowa heaps onerous burdens on low- and middle-income families while asking the richest citizens to contribute a significantly smaller share.

This inequitable tax situation results from a combination of imperfect tax policies and missed opportunities. The passage of the federal Tax Reform Act of 1986 gave Iowa a golden opportunity to improve the fairness of its tax system. By following the federal lead, the state could have made its system more progressive and made the well-off begin to pay their fair share.

 

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September 11, 1988 04:51 PM | Permalink |

It’s outrageous. By the middle of this decade, the United States tax code had become so riddled with loopholes that the biggest, most profitable corporations in the nation could routinely thumb their noses at the federal tax collector-and do so legally and with impunity. Meanwhile, people who worked for those corporations- from the secretarial pool to the assembly line-stood by and watched as taxes were withheld week after week from their paychecks. They felt like they were being had. And they were.

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June 11, 1986 04:54 PM | Permalink |

This report is the third in a series of CTJ surveys of the taxpaying or tax-avoiding habits of America’s major corporations, many of which have enjoyed a tax holiday since the experiment in supply-side corporate tax “incentives” began in 1981. It comes as Congress is on the verge of fundamental reform of the federal income tax code, including changes designed to respond to public discontent with a tax system that allows profitable corporations to avoid their tax responsibilities.

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February 11, 1986 04:57 PM | Permalink |

In 1981, President Reagan proposed, and Congress enacted, the largest corporation tax reduction in history. The centerpiece of the program was something called the “Accelerated Cost Recovery System,” a new set of rules for writing off business plant and equipment. The new write-offs, in conjunction with an expended investment tax credit and other tax preferences, were designed to be so large and so generous that they would reduce federal income taxes on the profits generated by new investments to well below zero.

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August 11, 1985 05:00 PM | Permalink |

1984 was a banner year for corporate profits, They were up 26% over 1983, reaching an all-time high of $286. Their share of national income fell just short of 10%, the highest level since 1978.

Despite this spectacular rebound in profitability, 1984 was yet another banner year for corporate tax avoidance.

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August 1, 1985 02:36 PM | Permalink |

1984 was a banner year for corporate profits. They were up 26% over 1983, reaching an all-time high of $286 billion. Their share of national income fell just short of 10%, the highest level since 1978.

Despite this spectacular rebound in profitability, 1984 was yet another banner year for corporate tax avoidance.

Last year, we released a widely-circulated study, Corporate Income Taxes in the Reagan Years, which examined the profits and federal income taxes of 250 corporations in the years 1981, 1982 and 1983. With the addition of the 1984 data, the full story of corporate tax avoidance during President Reagan’s first term can be told. It is a story of unparalleled corporate success at beating the federal tax collector.

Our new survey, which covers the four years from 1981 to 1984, expands on our earlier work. The new study is based on the annual reports to shareholders of 275 major American corporations. All of the companies covered by the report were profitable over the four years. In fact, their total 1981-84 pretax profits exceeded $400 billion—or more than a third of the $1.1 trillion in total adjusted pretax corporate profits included by the Commerce Department in its National Income Accounts.

In this report, we look at the 275 companies’ domestic profits and the income taxes they paid—or failed to pay—on those profits to the federal government. We assess the impact of the Reagan administration’s 1981 corporate tax cut program on corporate tax liabilities and on the economy. Finally, we discuss the current popular outcry for tax reform and examine how the President’s latest tax change proposals measure up.

A description of the methodology used to select the 275 companies included in the study, calculate their domestic pretax profits, and determine the actual federal income taxes they paid or the tax benefits they received is included at the end of this report.

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January 11, 1985 05:02 PM | Permalink |

It’s no secret. The federal corporate income tax is but a loophole-riddled shadow of its former self. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, it contributed a quarter of all federal revenues. By 1983, its share had dropped to 6.2%, with loopholes reducing corporate tax revenue by $1.67 for every dollar actually collected.

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October 1, 1984 05:04 PM | Permalink |

Why is it that the federal government is racking up record-breaking budget deficits while most Americans believe–and rightly so–that they are paying more in taxes than ever?

There is, of course, more than one reason. But one answer can be found in the demiste of the corporate income tax. Once, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the corporate income tax supplied one fourth of all federal government revenues. By 1983, the figure had dropped to 6.2%.

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March 1, 1984 02:38 PM | Permalink |

TAX REFORM. “The more you get into it, the more complicated it becomes,” lamented Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan in the spring of 1983. “But there has to be an easier way.”

Indeed, it sometimes seems that almost anything would be preferable to our current Internal Revenue mess. Our federal tax system is unnecessarily complex, widely perceived as unfair, and failing miserably to raise sufficient funds to run the government. And there’s certainly no shortage of proposals for fundamental change. Flat taxes, “Fair Taxes,” consumption taxes, valueadded taxes, even no taxes—all are being pushed from various quarters as the solution to our tax discontents.

So far, the public is hedging its bets. Louis Harris’s pollsters found in 1983 that 62 percent of the Americans they talk ed to supported adoption of a simplified personal income tax with no deductions or credits. But by almost as large margins the same people opposed elimination of most of the specific tax breaks about which they were queried. A majority of the respondents to a 1983 Gallup poll thought a new national sales tax might be the best way to raise taxes, but they also said the main problem with the present system is that it undertaxes the rich and overtaxes the middle class and the poor.

We’re going to have to make up our minds, however, or they’ll be made up for us. Despite the fact that hardly anyone in Washington thinks the tax code will be junked all at once in favor of a streamlined system and despite all the maddening philosophical, technical and political conundrums that Secretary Regan has discovered, significant changes in the tax laws are highly likely over the next few years—if only to bring federal receipts more in line with spending. The need for major action could provide the opportunity to move toward a simpler , fairer, more acceptable tax system. It could also, however, easily lead to a tax system even worse than the current approach.

The American people, it appears, want a change in direction in tax policy. In the pages that follow, the leading tax alternatives will be scrutinized, with a particularly critical look at something called the “progressive consumption tax.” To start with, however , it mak es sense to review how we got to our present sorry state.

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