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, [...]

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan would result in a massive tax cut for nearly all of the highest earning Americans and a steep average tax hike for everyone else, according to a new Tax Policy Center analysis. As Cain knows, when you are in the fast-food pizza business marketing is everything.  Your white cheese, pureed [...]

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare If I understand correctly, Congressional Republicans will not support job killing tax increases of any kind as part of a plan to reduce the federal deficit. They may, however, support non-job killing revenue raisers. Newspapers [...]

In Washington, bad ideas never go away. Now two old tax breaks have resurfaced with the ostensible goal of creating jobs, despite plenty of evidence that neither actually works. One would create a payroll tax break (aimed at employers instead of workers this time). The other would grant a temporary tax holiday to multinational corporations that [...]

Will Donald Trump bring Barack Obama’s birth certificate to the Royal wedding? I have no idea, but now that I’ve made our Web optimization folks happy, here is another question: What’s the deal with the People’s Budget, the fiscal plan released this week by 80 congressional progressives? The answer is likely to drive less traffic than [...]

Imagine for a moment you walk into a dealership to buy the vehicle of your dreams. The salesman asks what you want to pay. You say $50. He counters with $50,000. The good news is you have begun a negotiation. The bad news is, you’ve got a lot of talking to do before you can drive [...]