Hillary Clinton’s tax proposals would raise $1.1 trillion, mostly from the wealthy. TPC released its analysis of her tax plan yesterday. She’d raise taxes on businesses and high-income households; modestly reduce the incentives to work, save, and invest; and make the tax code more complex. Her proposals would make minimal changes to the after-tax incomes of those with low and moderate incomes. “Clinton’s plan stands out for being so…modest. No promises of huge tax cuts or big new spending programs. And no big boost in the public debt,” notes TPC’s Howard Gleckman. He qualifies: “Given the nation’s unsustainable fiscal course, moderation may not be enough.”
If you caught the debate last night... There wasn’t much substantive discussion of the candidates' tax plans. In one bow to reality, Ted Cruz acknowledged that despite his promises to abolish the IRS, "an office in the Treasury" would still have to collect taxes. Earlier yesterday TPC shared new estimates of GOP candidate Ted Cruz’s tax plan, given his recent change to the size of the Earned Income Tax Credit. There’s a debate Sunday between Democratic hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
Six more weeks of tax filing season! So far, more than a third of taxpayers have filed their returns. The IRS received 58,304,000 returns as of February 26 and has processed 56,290,000. About 94 percent were e-filed. Tax preparers completed about half of those. The average refund so far: $3,503.
How are families’ increasing complexity affecting their tax filing? A new TPC paper documents what demographic trends mean for tax filing and eligibility for programs like the earned income tax credit, child tax credit, and dependent exemption.
Curious about how states treat corporate net operating losses? Federal tax law allows corporations to carry back net operating losses for two years and carry them forward for up to 20 years. That means if a corporation generates losses in 2015, it can amend its 2013 and 2014 returns and reduce tax liability for those years. TPC’s Norton Francis has a new Tax Fact that illustrates the variation in treatment of NOL in states with corporate income taxes.
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