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 [...]

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 [...]

President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on corporate jets is the Democratic version of “waste, fraud and abuse”—a political attack on a target of opportunity that has little significance in the real world. Just as pols have long implied that reducing government waste or cutting foreign aid can result in big budget savings, so now the White [...]

In a revealing interview with Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal, Representative Michele Bachmann(R-MN) called for repealing taxes on capital gains. She also said she strongly believes that everyone should pay some income tax. This got me wondering: What would happen to the number of non-payers if the GOP presidential hopeful got her wish [...]

The tax deal reached by President Obama and congressional Republicans (but not Hill Democrats) includes a bit of good, some bad, and some really ugly. To summarize, this package would make nearly the entire individual revenue code permanently temporary, which is horrible tax policy. It gives the lie to the pious talk about deficit reduction [...]

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), one of Congress’ most interesting members, was the guest at this morning’s session of TPC’s Tax Reform 2.0 series. He came to talk about his Roadmap for America’s Future—a comprehensive plan for dramatically restructuring both entitlement spending and the tax code. Ryan is nothing if not ambitious.

Just as demand for both alternative energy and low-income housing is growing, is the market drying up for the tax credits that drive much of the investment in both?
Evidence is that the answer is “yes.” The culprits: the crumbling economy, paralyzed bond markets, and the government itself. This may be yet another example of the always-deadly law of unintended consequences.

Lots of buzz lately about sovereign wealth funds—those huge investment pools run by foreign governments that are becoming an increasingly important source of capital for U.S. companies.
The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Phillips reports that foreign investors bought nearly $1 trillion in U.S. securities in 2007. And a small but growing share was acquired by sovereign wealth funds operated by dozens of countries, including China and the oil-soaked nations of the Middle East.

While everyone has focused on the individual elements of the stimulus bills working their way through Congress, few have paid much attention to the business provisions. They should, because they could turn out to be an awfully big waste of money.

So who does pay the corporate income tax? The question seems simple, but the answer turns out to be exceedingly complicated.