A basic tenet of public finance holds that people tend to do less of something when it is taxed. Raise income tax rates and some people will work less. Boost the gas tax and people will drive less. Hike the cigarette tax and people will smoke less. That inexorable law of demand poses two problems for the taxman. First, taxes distort behavior as people move from taxed activities to those that are taxed less or not at all. Sometimes, as in the case of cigarette taxes, we want to discourage the taxed activity. In other cases, the tax only makes the economy less efficient. Second, tax avoidance may reduce the revenue gained from a tax increase—or even negate it entirely. For example, if gasoline sales plummet when gas taxes rise, we get less revenue to build and maintain roads.    more »

Describing his financing options for health reform yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) delivered two messages: A) Eliminating the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health care is off the table and B) He would still like to find a way to curb this hugely expensive and inefficient subsidy. Baucus' bipartisan alternatives for limiting the exclusion cover the proverbial waterfront. Congress could cap the subsidy based on the value of the insurance plan, the income of the policyholder, or both. It could index the cap based on health care inflation, the consumer price index, or growth in GDP. It could “grandfather” existing union-negotiated plans, or not. What Baucus seems to be saying is: I’ll do whatever it takes to reduce the value of the exclusion, even if it is only a small step toward eventual repeal.    more »

Taxes aren’t just for grown-ups. In fact, our new Urban/Brookings study estimates that 40 percent of all federal expenditures spent on infants and toddlers flows through the tax system. That’s more than $22.8 billion. The two main programs that drive this spending are the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC). Although both allocate fairly large percentages (18%) of their total program expenditures to families with infants and toddlers, they differ dramatically in the benefits that are refundable and those that are not. The EITC is fully-refundable, so in 2007 (the most recent year of available data), almost 90 percent of benefits received by families with infants and toddlers ($7.1 billion) came as a tax refund. In contrast, only one third of the partially refundable CTC benefits ($2.8 billion) were refundable, so most of CTC’s benefits reduced tax liability but failed to put cash back into needy families’ hands.    more »

TPC's Eric Toder will be part of an all-star cast tomorrow to discuss tax expenditures. Eric, who did a terrific paper with Len Burman and Chris Geissler on the recent explosion of these provisions, will be joined by Bob Frank, Jim Nussle, Doug Holtz-Eakin, and others. Tomorrow at the New America Foundation from 9:30 -11:30. For more info, click here. It should be interesting. 

    

On March 24, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, said this about the President’s budget: “Not only are we mortgaging our children's future; we are mortgaging our current prosperity. The President is proposing a gusher of new debt, new taxes, and more spending.” We are, he concluded, “on a massive borrowing, taxing, and spending spree.” The only problem is that Ryan and other Republicans are perfectly happy to propose spending increases of their own, as long as they are masked as tax cuts. The House GOP leadership is proposing a package of massive new housing subsidies, including a $5,000 credit for those who refinance their homes and a $15,000 credit for buyers. I hate to break the news, but these tax credits are spending.    more »

The press has widely reported that the difference between Senate and House stimulus bills is mostly about tax cuts (Senate) versus spending (House). That's wrong. The main difference is about who runs the spending programs-the IRS or program agencies In fact, the Senate bill includes some major expansions in spending--notably, subsidies for car and home buyers--and cuts in others, such as aid to state and local governments. The new Senate spending was presented as tax cuts, but that is simply window dressing. The add-ons are spending programs, and particularly ineffective ones at that.    more »