Barack Obama has pulled off the easy part. He got re-elected. Now, he faces a second term full of painful choices. You could see it in his campaign, which focused more on Mitt Romney’s flaws than on what the president would do in the next four years. Much of this, I suspect, was the result [...]

With the presidential campaign finally reaching a soggy finish, TaxVox is taking a final pre-election look at the tax policies of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Last week, we described Obama’s tax policy platform. Here is a rundown of Mitt Romney’s tax agenda. The elevator speech: Romney favors multiple tax cuts for individuals and would reduce [...]

After all the promises and finger-pointing, the presidential campaign is nearly over. But since the race has shed more heat than light on how each of the candidates would govern, I thought it would be useful to describe exactly what Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have pledged to do on tax policy if elected on [...]

When it comes to taxes, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are almost perfect mirror images of one another. Here are ten ways their tax plans are different. Romney’s tax agenda is ambitious and opaque. Obama’s is modest but relatively transparent. Obama has shown little interest in broad-based tax reform. Romney wants to fundamentally rewrite the [...]

Who pays the corporate income tax?  It is one of the most vexing questions tax experts face. Now, to keep pace with the latest research, the Tax Policy Center has revised its methodology for figuring where this tax falls. The bottom line: For the first time, TPC assumes that workers bear some of the corporate [...]

A House panel today began what could be the beginning of a remarkable exercise: It is reviewing the merits of dozens of expiring tax provisions that litter the Revenue Code. I hesitate to say so, but this could be a case of Congress doing its actual job.   By the Joint Committee on Taxation’s count, [...]

If you are interested in a serious but accessible look at my favorite topic—tax reform—check out two new books. One, The Benefit and the Burden  Tax Reform: Why We Need It and What It Will Take by Bruce Bartlett, focuses on individual reform. The second, Corporate Tax Reform: Taxing Profits in the 21st Century by Martin [...]

At first glance, it looked like President Obama and congressional Republicans were miraculously headed in the same direction on corporate tax reform. Reform plans by Obama and GOP leaders such as House Ways & Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) seemed simpatico. Both sides embraced lower rates. Both endorsed ending business tax subsidies, through neither had much to [...]

The President’s new Framework for Business Tax Reform is two documents in one. The first diagnoses the many flaws in America’s business tax system, and the second offers a framework for fixing them. Much of the resulting commentary has focused on the policy recommendations. But I’d like to give a shout out to the diagnosis. [...]

Here’s what I love about President Obama’s Framework for Business Tax Reform: His diagnosis of the problem is spot on. In just a few pages, the Treasury Department does a marvelous job describing what’s wrong with the way the U.S. taxes business. Anybody interested in understanding why the tax code is such a mess should [...]