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Howard Gleckman discussed some of the facts and issues regarding the role of small businesses in the debate on the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Eric Toder expressed a strange sense of déjà vu. While everyone agrees that changes in the top two marginal tax rates would affect only a small share of individuals [...] Yesterday, the Washington Post, New York Times and other news sources ran stories about a new JCT “report” that was sent to Democratic congressional staff relating to the distribution of their proposal versus the Republican proposal (and current law) regarding the expiring “Bush” tax cuts. Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein popularized this chart that was in [...] Following the flap over our Tax Policy Center colleague Bob Williams’s calculation that close to half of all families did not pay income tax in 2009, we thought it would be instructive to take a look at history. It turns out that over the past five decades, there have been other periods when families with [...] Right now, Washington is in a debate over whether to extend the so-called “Bush” tax cuts for all taxpayers versus allowing them to expire on those taxpayers at the very top. Democrats claim that it’s fiscally responsible to let the tax cuts expire for those at the top. The fact of the matter though is that [...] It’s hard to imagine that spending restraint alone can solve America’s long-run fiscal woes. Facing an aging population and rising health care costs, the federal government will continue to expand even if policymakers take serious steps to trim spending. That’s why policy wonks are working so hard to evaluate ways to raise more revenue. Cutting [...] Back in 2005, Congress gave many high-income savers a great gift, with the proviso that they couldn’t unwrap the package until this year. The bequest allowed the affluent to convert their traditional tax-deferred Individual Retirement Accounts into tax-free Roth IRAs. Now that these lucky investors have torn open the box, we’re beginning to learn what this [...] The Congressional Budget Office offers two visions of the future in its new long-run budget outlook. The first imagines a world in which lawmakers take pay-as-you-go budgeting really seriously. The budget baseline assumes that existing laws execute exactly as written: all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire, the alternative minimum tax hits millions more families, [...] While the rest of us are celebrating Independence Day, most states are commemorating the beginning of their new fiscal years. Forty-six states started their budget year on July 1 and most have managed to pass their tax and spending plans on time. In many legislatures, fiscal plans were accompanied with more than the usual share [...] When the Senate returns next week, it must confront a bit of unfinished business—what to do about extending unemployment benefits. As fans of the ongoing soap opera that is the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body already know, the Senate failed to pass the unemployment bill before rushing out of town for its Fourth of July holiday. And [...] On the day when the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal debt could reach 185 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2035, consider a bill introduced by two Arizona lawmakers, Senator John McCain and Representative Jeff Flake. Carrying on a nearly two-decades-old tradition, the two GOP legislators have introduced the “Debt Buy-Down Act,” which [...] |
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