Publications By Type
Document Type: Article
Real Tax Reform is Always Hard: Some Advice for the Task Force (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
C. Eugene Steuerle
Political theater? Such is the label many have attached to the tax reform task force headed by Paul Volcker. But I heard the same claim made about President Reagan's State of the Union request for a tax reform study from the Treasury Department to be made only after the 1984 election was over. Congress literally burst out laughing.
Published: 11/05/09
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The Opacity of Marginal Tax Rates (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Rosanne Altshuler , Jacob Goldin
Suppose that a taxpayer earns an additional dollar of
income. How much tax would she owe on that dollar? A
natural way to answer this question would be to look up
the taxpayer’s statutory tax rate - the tax rate corresponding
to her tax bracket and filing status.
Published: 10/21/09
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Credits and Exemptions for Children (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Elaine Maag
The Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit (CTC), Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), and the dependent exemption all provide benefits to families
with children. In 2009, a single mom (or dad) with two children can receive benefits ranging from $0 to about $7,500 - depending on her income, age of the children,
and where the children live. While this assistance is extremely important to many low-income families, they
must navigate a bewildering set of rules to take full advantage of the credits. Due to the piecewise implementation of these credits and exemptions, total benefits bounce around erratically as income grows.
Published: 10/14/09
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Focus on the Tax 'Avoidance' Gap (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Eric Toder
President Obama's tax reform task force has been asked to propose ways to close the $300 billion tax gap, which is the estimated difference between taxes owed and taxes paid either voluntarily or through enforcement. But the amount of money lost to legal tax avoidance - the difference between an income tax without special tax preferences and taxes under current law - at least double that lost to outright evasion. The perpetrators of this second, "avoidance" tax gap are legislators, not taxpayers. The panel's main focus should be on finding appropriate ways to close this second tax gap.
Published: 09/10/09
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Remove the Return (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
William G. Gale
The Volcker task force on tax reform, part of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, faces a daunting task that is made materially more difficult by ex ante constraints placed on its purview and recommendations. Broad-based reform proposals seem to be out of the question, and distributional constraints appear to eliminate many serious ideas. Nevertheless, I believe that significant tax simplification is feasible despite the task force's constraints, and I will take it as a given that simplification
is desirable.
Published: 09/09/09
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Automatic Enrollment in IRAs: Costs and Benefits (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Benjamin H. Harris , Rachel M. Johnson
To encourage better retirement saving, President Obama recently proposed policies that would require firms without retirement savings plans to automatically enroll their workers in IRAs. In addition, the president proposed an expansion of the Saver's Credit to be fully refundable and available to middle-income taxpayers. This report estimates the revenue costs and distributional effects of the president's proposals.
Published: 08/31/09
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Taxing Adjusted Gross Income Instead of Taxable Income (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Jacob Goldin , Eric Toder
The House leadership has proposed to finance health care reform with a surtax on adjusted gross income (AGI) of high-income individuals, while the president's budget would increase the two top marginal tax rates on taxable income. Income taxed at statutory marginal rates is 58 percent of AGI for all taxpayers but only 46 percent of AGI for taxpayers with income over $1 million. While personal exemptions and deductions account for most of the difference between the two tax bases for the population as a whole, capital gains and qualified dividends make up most of the difference for very high income taxpayers.
Published: 08/25/09
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AMT Coverage by State, 2007 (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Carol Rosenberg
Many taxpayers must calculate their federal income tax liability under two sets of rules: those applying to the regular income tax and those of the alternative minimum tax. If a taxpayer owes more tax under the alternative rules, then the difference is paid as AMT. The AMT hits people in some states harder than it does in others because state and local income and property taxes are not allowed as itemized deductions against the AMT and because income varies across states. This column discusses AMT participation rates by state.
Published: 08/19/09
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Who Pays No Income Tax? (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Roberton Williams
Nearly half of all tax units will pay no income tax in 2009. The fraction of non-taxpayers differs widely, depending on income, tax filing status, and whether the unit is elderly or contains children.
Published: 07/02/09
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Federal Taxes and the Elderly (Article)
Author(s):
Rudolph G. Penner
The article considers special federal tax provisions affecting the elderly. It examines the taxation of Social Security, private retirement accounts, estate taxation and other provisions of the law that mention age. It also analyzes how the elderly might be affected by tax increases necessitated by the dismal long-run budget outlook. In particular, it looks at the possibility that we shall become more reliant on consumption taxes.
Published: 02/03/09
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