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 [...]

The least popular Congress in memory is back.  I, personally, am thrilled. After a year in which lawmakers did almost nothing besides (barely) keeping the government running, this session promises hardly more.  Tax policy will be at the center of much of the partisan squabbling, but it is hard to imagine Congress achieving more than a temporary [...]

Here’s a quick multiple choice quiz about the Gang of Six’s new budget proposal. Over the next ten years, would the proposal: a. Cut taxes by $1.5 trillion b. Increase taxes by $2.0 trillion c. Increase taxes by $1.2 trillion d. All of the above. If you answered (d), you have a fine future as [...]

The Senate’s bipartisan on again/off again Gang of Six has proposed an ambitious tax and spending package that closely follows the plan offered six months ago by the chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Their plan is not so much a budget as a framework. In some cases it is quite [...]

I should be doing my taxes, but instead I’m writing this column. When I’m done with that, maybe I’ll do some ironing. I’d do anything to postpone tax filing. It’s just so darn complicated! Ironically, perhaps, I’m something of a tax expert. I was a top tax official in President Clinton’s Treasury Department and cofounded [...]

If you’re among the one-third of taxpayers who itemize deductions on their federal tax returns, the IRS says you can take your time filing your 2010 tax return. Or rather you have to take your time. The IRS won’t let itemizers (or people who claim either the college tuition or educator expense deductions) file until [...]

As usual in December, personal finance columns are filled with end-of-year tax advice—all those things you should do before New Year’s to cut your tax bill. But 2010’s end-of-year issues are different: This year, it’s Congress and the president who need to act fast on a long list of tax policies. Everyone knows about the [...]

The alternative minimum tax, America’s favorite stealth levy, threatens to hit 27 million taxpayers this year if Congress doesn’t patch it once again. Given legislators’ apparent determination to defer any action on tax issues until after the election, an AMT fix will likely come late in the year, if at all. A quick review of [...]

It has become a regular stop on Washington’s fiscal merry-go-round: Congress patches the Alternative Minimum Tax for a year or two, but leaves future fixes for mañana. For instance, the Senate Budget Committee’s new fiscal blueprint makes room to fix the AMT for one year only and assumes money will be found from somewhere to pay for future patches. In its fiscal 2011 budget, the Obama Administration also assumes the AMT will be repaired, but buries the cost in its baseline and makes no effort to find the money to pay for the fix.

Congress is absolutely right to end the decade-old fantasy that it wants to trim Medicare payments to doctors. This law has been on the books for 12 years and is annually ignored. Lawmakers should stop pretending. But I fear they will make this change without paying for it–adding $250 billion to the national debt over the next decade.