With policymakers divided over letting President Bush’s tax cuts on incomes above $250,000 per couple ($200,000 for single filers) expire on schedule, some have proposed raising that threshold so that only the tax cuts on incomes over $500,000 or $1 million per couple would expire. That’s a terrible idea. Raising the threshold would slash the deficit savings, and,...
off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Why We Shouldn’t Raise the Bush Tax Cut Threshold
December 6, 2012
How Many Workers in Each State Would Benefit from Extending the Payroll Tax Cut?
December 3, 2012
Now that President Obama has made the payroll tax cut — which expires at the end of the month — part of the tax debate, let’s look at how many workers have a direct stake in extending it for one more year. We estimate that more than 150 million workers would benefit, including large...
Will High-Income People Work Less if the High-Income Tax Cuts Expire?
November 30, 2012
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed yesterday that allowing the top two income tax rates to rise to Clinton-era levels would harm the...
Rattner: Raise Capital Gains and Dividend Rates to Help Shrink Deficits
November 26, 2012
In a must-read New York Times op-ed, long-time financier and former Obama Administration official Steven Rattner calls for raising today’s low capital gains and dividend tax rates to help reduce the deficit, observing:
During my 30...
High-Income Tax Cuts Are a Poor Way to Support the Recovery
November 12, 2012
As we’ve noted, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report shows that extending the high-income tax cuts would boost gross domestic product (GDP) by merely 0.1 percent by the end of 2013, compared to a 1.3...
Claims About Economic Downside of Ending High-End Tax Cuts Don’t Hold Up
November 12, 2012
House Ways and Means Republicans and others have cited a report — sponsored by various business interests and produced by the accounting firm Ernst & Young — claiming that letting the high-income Bush tax cuts expire would shrink employment by 0.5 percent over ten years, which the report says translates...
10 Myths About the Estate Tax
November 5, 2012
One of the lesser-known tax breaks that would expire at year-end under current law is a 2010 cut in the estate tax, which had already shrunk considerably between 2001 and 2009 due to President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. With policymakers expected to consider what to do about the tax in the coming weeks, we’ve updated a paper that...
Payroll Tax Cut Should Stay on the Table
October 22, 2012
In the C-SPAN interview we mentioned earlier today, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) also said that Congress should consider extending the payroll tax cut: “I don’t...
Few Wealthy Winners, Many Moderate-Income Losers from Tax-Extension Proposal
October 15, 2012
Republican leaders in Congress have called for extending a 2010 cut in the estate tax on roughly 7,000 multi-million-dollar estates. But their proposals, one of which the House passed in August, wouldn’t extend a piece of the same 2010 legislation that strengthened the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit for 13 million working families with moderate incomes.
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