Alice Rivlin, a member of Obama’s deficit commission (technically, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform), tells Damian Paletta at The Wall Street Journal that Congress should compromise on tax cuts by pushing the floor higher.
The White House and most Democrats want to extend the Bush tax More…
The federal government’s single biggest source of revenue is income tax, but cities and towns are primarily funded by sales and property taxes. That means Washington’s revenue took a huge hit in 2008 and 2009, as payrolls declined. But Springfield and Bethesda and Houston? The bust of housing market More…
Today, Douglas Elmendorf, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Senate Budget Committee on the subject of the Bush tax cuts. If Congress does nothing, the tax cuts expire as planned at the end of the year and taxes rise for all earners. The White House More…
Not happening before the election, after all:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told reporters that Republican threats to block a vote unless Democrats extend all the tax cuts, including for the wealthy, make the timing impossible.
My friend Ethan Pollack, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, writes to note that our hypothetical $250,000-a-year earner from this post might actually see his household’s taxes go down, if Obama’s changes go through:
Pop quiz. Say you make a steady $250,001, every year. How many dollars of additional income tax will you pay if the Obama administration’s tax plan goes through? A thousand dollars? A few thousand? Nope. Three cents.
Today, in the Senate’s first session since early August, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the minority leader, proposed freezing income tax rates for all Americans. The White House is currently pushing for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for middle-class and lower-income Americans, while letting the tax cuts expire for More…
At the National Review, Reihan Salam, all-around smartypants, voices the conservative response to my post proposing that Congress should create more tax brackets. He argues that a new tax bracket for the very rich would do three bad things and therefore is not worth creating: it would increase More…
Imagine a government that moves its top income tax rate higher and higher every year. At some point, that imaginary government would raise taxes so high that it would dissuade its citizens from bothering to make more money at all: Taxing income at, say, 80 percent might actually bring in More…
A happy tax day to all readers. Yesterday, I took a look at the conservative talking point that only 47 percent of Americans pay income taxes. Today, Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser to President George W. Bush, explains that Republicans expanded the tax credits that ensure that a More…
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