What would fundamental changes in the federal tax code mean for state and local governments? Would it limit their ability to raise or borrow money? Would it make their revenue systems more or less progressive or even work more smoothly? Last Friday, I participated in a joint Tax Policy Center and UCLA Law School conference [...]

On Tuesday, I testified before the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing titled “Extenders and Tax Reform: Seeking Long-Term Solutions.” I was already depressed about the state of our tax system before I started preparing. As I drafted my testimony, I became distraught. Our tax system is a mess and unless we send a clear [...]

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on “Extenders and Tax Reform: Seeking Long-Term Solutions.”  It’s about time!  The charade of annual or biennial debate about perpetually “expiring” tax provisions is terrible tax policy and a symbol of our failure to come to terms with budget reality. If you need help sleeping, download the Joint [...]

A well-designed Value-Added Tax could simplify the tax code for most households and finance significant reductions in corporate and individual income tax rates without adding to the budget deficit. And it could be a key piece of a revenue system that is both progressive and less intrusive in economic decisions than today’s law. That’s the [...]

Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a lingering view that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would primarily help middle-income households and not favor the rich. Yet TPC’s analysis of the plan clearly showed that high-income households would win big and others would do less well. Poor families would actually lose, relative to the taxes they’re [...]

For a while there, I thought President Obama was going to embrace tax reform in his State of the Union address.  Instead, following the lead of his predecessors, he offered a laundry list of new tax subsidies, bragged about some old ones, and said almost nothing about a top-to-bottom rewrite of the Tax Code. Here’s just [...]

The top tax rate on long-term capital gains is currently 15%. That’s why Mitt Romney is spending so much time talking about his tax returns. That revelation has set off a familiar debate about whether that low rate is appropriate. Often overlooked in these discussions, however, is the fact that the days of the 15% [...]

If we are going to reduce the medium- and long-deficit, new tax revenues must be part of the solution. And those taxes must be progressive and as conducive to economic growth as possible. Historical revenue levels will not be sufficient to fund the federal government in the future. We will need to control the ballooning [...]

Rick Santorum, who may have won the Iowa caucuses after all, favors a huge broad-based tax cut that would massively increase the budget deficit. According to new estimates by my colleagues at the Tax Policy Center, the former Pennsylvania senator would cut taxes for nearly all households making $40,000 or more. But the impact on the [...]

A new Tax Policy Center analysis finds that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would cut taxes for millions of households but bestow most of its benefits on those with the highest incomes. At the same time, it would significantly cut corporate taxes and add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit. Compared to current law (assuming [...]