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 [...]

President Obama didn’t quite get around to saying so when he rolled out his latest deficit reduction plan on Monday, but his Buffett Rule—that no one making more than $1 million should pay a lower tax rate than those in the middle-class—is mostly about investment income. On average, high income people do pay significantly higher tax rates than [...]

On Monday, the Administration released its deficit reduction blueprint.   One part of the Administration’s proposal, which has received enormous attention, is that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction should observe the “Buffett Rule” if it attempts tax reform.  The furor over this proposal is surprising and the debate about it seems to have largely [...]

Welcome to the season of jobs plans. GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman offered his last week. President Obama will propose his before Thursday night’s football game.  But today is GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s day. And at least when it comes to tax policy, he veers a bit to the left of the new Republican orthodoxy.  To be [...]

After I wrote last week about Warren Buffett’s New York Times op-ed on the low tax rates paid by wealthy investors, Tax Policy Center visiting scholar Brian Galle pointed out that my graph showing the maximum tax rates Americans could pay was misleading. Actual tax rates, he noted, are much lower than what the graph [...]

When Warren Buffett called for higher taxes on the wealthy in a New York Times op-ed last week, the billionaire investor argued that he and wealthy people like him face lower federal rates than the rest of us. Low rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends and limited exposure to payroll taxes mean low [...]

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wasn’t talking about taxes (the laws were very different back in 1926) but his assertion certainly applies to the way the wealthy fare under today’s tax law. For proof, take a look at the annual [...]

While there seems to be growing agreement in Washington that the U.S. needs to cut its tax rate on corporations, there is (surprise) no consensus at all on how to pay for this. One way: Raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.    This idea was one element of the broad tax reforms proposed last year by the chairs of [...]

To the Obama Administration, tax reform means corporate tax restructuring. Both the president and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have argued that at least the first tranche of reform would scale back tax preferences, cut corporate rates, and, in all, raise the same money that the tax code does today.  In Obama’s vision, redesign of the individual tax [...]