A well-designed Value-Added Tax could simplify the tax code for most households and finance significant reductions in corporate and individual income tax rates without adding to the budget deficit. And it could be a key piece of a revenue system that is both progressive and less intrusive in economic decisions than today’s law. That’s the [...]

For a while there, I thought President Obama was going to embrace tax reform in his State of the Union address.  Instead, following the lead of his predecessors, he offered a laundry list of new tax subsidies, bragged about some old ones, and said almost nothing about a top-to-bottom rewrite of the Tax Code. Here’s just [...]

A new Tax Policy Center analysis finds that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would cut taxes for millions of households but bestow most of its benefits on those with the highest incomes. At the same time, it would significantly cut corporate taxes and add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit. Compared to current law (assuming [...]

With Rick Santorum surging in Iowa, it is a good time to take a look at his tax agenda. While his revenue plan has received almost no attention, it plays a  major role in his “faith, family and freedom” campaign. His playbook: lower rates for individuals and corporations, substantially cut taxes on capital, and increase the personal [...]

In two days, 53 targeted tax breaks will, officially at least, die. By the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation’s count, that’s the number of temporary tax subsidies that are due to expire on December 31. They’ve become known as the extenders, which sounds like the name of a wonky rock band but isn’t. They got [...]

Should Congress extend and expand the payroll tax cut it first passed a year ago? In a bizarre but not unexpected role reversal, Democrats insist that at a time of economic uncertainty, Congress must not only extend this tax cut but make it even more generous. And Republicans seem to have somehow discovered a tax break [...]

I’ve been reviewing the tax plans of the major Republican presidential hopefuls and am struck at how conventional Mitt Romney’s is.  While Herman Cain wants to replace the entire federal tax code with his 9-9-9 consumption tax and Rick Perry favors a massive tax cut, Romney would do little more than tinker around the edges of the current [...]

On Nov. 2, TaxVox reported on a new Joint Committee on Taxation study on whether it is possible to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent by eliminating business tax preferences. In response, we heard from George Callas,  staff director of the Ways & Means Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, who has a very different view of the study. George has [...]

It has been an article of faith among most congressional Republicans and many Democrats that the corporate tax rate should be cut from today’s top level of 35 percent to 25 percent—or even less. And backers of the idea breezily suggest this could be paid for by scaling back some corporate tax breaks. But a new [...]

There is lots we still don’t know about GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry’s tax and budget plan. But I am pretty sure of one thing: The proposal he released today would result in a massive tax cut and, combined with his vow to balance the federal budget by 2020, implies huge reductions in federal spending.  Perry, [...]