If you are a tax geek, or even a normal person who wants to keep up with the ongoing debate over restructuring the tax code, download a copy of the congressional Joint Tax Committee’s Tax Reform Working Group Report. It is 568 pages long, doesn’t have much of a plot, has no character development (unless you [...]

There may be no more vexing challenge in the Revenue Code than the taxation of foreign transactions of multinational companies. Most everyone agrees that the current system is a mess. And corporate tax reform is impossible without addressing international issues. Yet, this corner of the tax law is not only immensely complex but most proposed [...]

It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that the just-announced retirement of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) boosts chances for tax reform in the short term. I’m not so sure. The upbeat argument goes like this: By announcing that he will not run for reelection in 2014, Baucus is free from the pressures of [...]

The revenue proposals included in President Obama’s 2014 budget would, as intended, significantly raise taxes on the highest-income American households. However, despite Obama’s long-standing pledge to protect individuals making below $200,000 (and couples making $250,000 or less) from any tax hikes, even many of those families would pay slightly more than under today’s tax law. [...]

President Obama’s 2014 budget arrived two months late and was declared DOA by the House GOP leadership days before they even saw it. Yet, it is full of items of interest, including a new millionaire tax and a renewed proposal to limit the value of tax preferences for high income households. But what about the [...]

The White House has put out the word that President Obama’s budget will propose changing the way government adjusts benefits for Social Security and other programs (as well as the income tax). Liberal Social Security advocates are furious. By shifting to a measure called the chained Consumer Price Index, the retirement system would boost benefits [...]

You probably read stories over the weekend about how the Senate passed a 2014 budget just before dawn on Saturday morning, a day after the House passed its version. The Senate action got particular attention since it was the first time in four years that the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Deliberative Body actually approved a comprehensive [...]

The Senate Democrats’ budget, like the House version, rips unfair and inefficient tax preferences that litter the revenue code. But the tax provisions of the Senate budget, which is being debated on the floor today, raise at least two big problems: They see flaws in only in those tax expenditures that benefit high-income households and big [...]

The political response to the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) fiscal plan was predictable, and mostly based on caricatures of what TPC actually concluded. To review: TPC found that tax cuts similar to those described in the committee’s plan would add $5.7 trillion to the budget deficit over [...]

House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) has proposed a controversial  plan to balance the budget in 10 years, entirely by cutting planned spending by $4.6 trillion. While Ryan includes lots of specific spending cuts, his tax agenda is far less clear.    In some respects, the former GOP vice presidential candidate mimics the tactics [...]