Republicans like to say President Obama is a chronic, unrepentant tax-raiser. Obama himself used to say he was a tax-cutter but now touts himself as a fiscally responsible steward of the budget who would raise taxes—but only on the rich. Who is right? The Tax Policy Center has just completed its analysis of tax proposals [...]

At first glance, it looked like President Obama and congressional Republicans were miraculously headed in the same direction on corporate tax reform. Reform plans by Obama and GOP leaders such as House Ways & Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) seemed simpatico. Both sides embraced lower rates. Both endorsed ending business tax subsidies, through neither had much to [...]

Here’s what I love about President Obama’s Framework for Business Tax Reform: His diagnosis of the problem is spot on. In just a few pages, the Treasury Department does a marvelous job describing what’s wrong with the way the U.S. taxes business. Anybody interested in understanding why the tax code is such a mess should [...]

The new 2013 budget unveiled by President Obama on Monday again contains the Automatic IRA, which was developed by Brookings’ Retirement Security Project in conjunction with The Heritage Foundation. This year’s  version includes an important change that will also encourage more employers to offer a 401(k) account to their workers. However, important changes to the [...]

When it comes to taxes, President Obama has proposed what might best be called a conceptual budget—a powerful call for tax reform that is long on principles but, at least when it comes to individual levies, woefully short on specifics. This is understandable with what is effectively a reelection manifesto. In high campaign season, specifics [...]

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama’s called for a new law that would require high-income people to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. In response, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) have introduced the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, a proposal designed to [...]

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 [...]

As the economic coordinator of the Treasury study that led to Tax Reform Act of 1986, I’ve always found it fascinating to read and listen to stories about the law.   Many seek the linear trend from cause to effect to secondary cause to enactment, as if there was  some logical series of events that made [...]

I’m trying a new thing in the blog–imagining a debate between a smart conservative and liberal economist on a contentious tax policy issue. Here liberal economist Keynes and conservative economist Hayek debate the Buffett Rule–President Obama’s proposal that millionaires pay tax rates at least as high as middle-income people.  Let me know whether you think [...]

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s plan to fund a $445 billion stimulus, err, jobs bill with a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires is not all bad. After all, Tax the Rich does make a nice campaign bumper-sticker. But it is mostly bad. Why? Here are five reasons. The idea, endorsed today by President Obama, would [...]