The Buffett Rule, which says that millionaires should not pay a smaller share of their income in federal tax than less well-to-do Americans, would provide a “small improvement” in the nation’s tax system, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told Politico recently. As he argues, it’s an improvement worth making. The common...
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POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 6: How to Raise Taxes at the Top Consistent with Economic Growth?
May 2, 2012
This blog series and our new report have shown that tax increases on high-income people of the magnitude under consideration would not change their behavior in ways that would hurt economic growth. Moreover, the...
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 5: Can Tax Increases Help Economic Growth?
May 1, 2012
In this blog series, and in our new report, we’ve considered how raising taxes at the top might affect economic growth. We’ve found no convincing evidence that raising taxes at the levels that policymakers are considering would negatively affect high-income...
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 4: Would Tax Increases Affect Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship?
April 30, 2012
This blog series looks at how tax increases at the top affect economic growth. Today, we test claims that raising taxes on high-income people would heavily and adversely affect small businesses and entrepreneurs.
The claims don’t hold up against the evidence, as our...
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 3: Would Tax Increases Affect Savings and Investment?
April 27, 2012
The second installment in this series on how tax increases at the top might affect economic growth noted that changes in tax rates don’t substantially affect high-income people’s decisions...
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 2: Would Tax Increases Affect Work Effort?
April 26, 2012
The first installment in this series on how tax increases at the top might affect economic growth explained that while high-income people reduce their taxable income in...
The Reality of Raising Taxes at the Top, Part 1: Would Tax Hikes Shrink Taxable Income?
April 25, 2012
This blog series, based on a major new CBPP report, will look at the different ways in which raising taxes on high-income people might affect economic growth, starting with its impact on their taxable income...
Corporate Tax Reform Must Be Gimmick-Free
February 28, 2012
The President’s framework for corporate tax reform affirms an extremely important principle: reform must not rely on budget gimmicks to hide its true long-term cost:
While a number of the measures that raise revenue in...
Tax Preference for Capital Gains Doesn’t Make Sense
January 23, 2012
Great blog posts by our colleague Jared Bernstein and by Syracuse University professor Len Burman explain why the preferential tax treatment for capital gains — the gains from selling stocks, bonds, and other assets, which face a top tax rate of 15 percent, well below the top rates for ordinary income — is unjustified.
In two posts, Bernstein demonstrates that there is...
OECD: Tax and Spending Policy Can Push Against Rising Inequality
December 13, 2011
A number of reports on the recent income inequality study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have highlighted the finding that the United States ranks fourth in inequality among OECD countries. This ranking uses the “Gini” index of the distribution of “market income” —...