2011 was another active year for America’s tax and fiscal policy; thank you for sharing it with TaxVox. As we look forward to a busy 2012, we hope you’ll remember us in your end-of-year giving. By supporting the Tax Policy Center, you can help inform the debate about America’s fiscal future. Every tax-deductible gift will [...]

A wonderfully-titled new paper—The Tragedy of the Carrots—by Boston College law professor Brian Galle got me thinking about Solyndra, the failed solar panel company that has become something of  a poster child for botched industrial policy. By now, you probably know Solyndra’s sad tale. The firm got $537 million in federal loan guarantees from the [...]

PolitiFact’s Lou Jacobson recently pointed me to a blog post by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor complaining that President Obama’s proposal to limit itemized deductions would hurt soup kitchens—and their poor clients—by inducing rich people to give less to charities. That may be true, but Cantor’s own ideas about cutting taxes would do the same [...]

It has become fashionable (I am happy to say) for  politicians to talk about ending or at least scaling back tax subsidies. But  pols mean very different things when they say this. And new analysis by the Tax  Policy Center shows that whether they help you or not often depends on how much  money you [...]

When President Obama proposed to cap the value of itemized deductions at 28 percent, the philanthropic sector came out foursquare against the idea, claiming that it would decimate charitable contributions. Cutting the tax savings from gifts to charities for high-income taxpayers would raise the after-tax cost of giving and lead people to give less. For taxpayers in the 35 percent top tax bracket, the cost of giving away a dollar would jump 10 percent from 65 cents to 72 cents (ignoring any state tax savings). That would lead to perhaps a 2 percent drop in giving—about $9 billion. (Len Burman explained the math in TaxVox last year.)

In a rare bit of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee have introduced legislation to allow people who contribute to Haiti relief in 2010 to take a tax deduction against last year’s taxes. Well-intentioned as it may be, the measure is wrong-headed and likely to create more problems than it solves.