From the start of his 2008 campaign, President Obama has called for raising taxes on the rich. He got much but not all that he wanted in the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) earlier this year. Now his FY2014 budget takes another couple of bites at that apple. The first repeats his proposal to cap [...]

If you’re discussing tax policy with someone who asserts that his or her point is “just common sense,” this could indicate one of two things: Either no deep thought is required—as the person would have you believe. Or no deep thought has been applied. The “common sense” notion that capital income taxes hinder growth seems [...]

Can the income tax fund the government we seem to want? Probably not. Will lawmakers create a revenue system that will? Not anytime soon. That was the consensus of four tax policy experts at an Urban Institute panel I moderated this afternoon. The panelists–historian Joe Thorndike, Urban Institute economist and tax reform veteran Gene Steuerle, [...]

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.  [U.S. Constitution, 16th Amendment] On February 3, 1913, Delaware became the 36th state to ratify the 16th amendment to the Constitution, which authorized the US Income Tax. [...]

In the alphabet soup of Washington, ATRA fixed the AMT, sort of. In English, the newly enacted American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 will permanently protect millions of taxpayers from having to pay the alternative minimum tax without Congress having to approve a temporary patch every year or so. It even knocks a few hundred [...]

Suppose someone proposed a special tax on businesses that make their ownership shares publicly available in affordable, easy-to-sell units. Such an idea would probably generate a lot of push-back. Efficiency advocates might complain that it taxed the very attributes that make equity markets efficient. Progressivity advocates might object on the grounds that it taxed those [...]

Regardless of the outcome of the fiscal cliff negotiations, taxes on dividends will be higher in 2013 than in 2012. As a result, companies can save some shareholders plenty of taxes by paying some of next year’s dividends this year. But not every shareholder will benefit from this presumed largess. While the very wealthy will [...]

The Tax Policy Center’s new tables showing the revenue and distributional effects of capping itemized deductions have received a great deal of attention since we released them on Tuesday. Our results show that capping deductions can raise a large amount of revenue in a quite progressive manner. Capping deductions could thus be an important component [...]

In last night’s debate, Mitt Romney repeated the idea that he could pay for much or all of the 20 percent rate reduction and other tax cuts in his tax plan by capping itemized deductions at $25,000. He had previously suggested a $17,000 cap in an interview and, in the first debate, $25,000 or $50,000 [...]

By now, many readers of TaxVox know how much Barack Obama and Mitt Romney pay in taxes. But true tax wonks are more interested in why the candidates paid what they paid. A new infographic from the Tax Policy Center tells that story. The interactive display of the president’s and Romney’s (preliminary) 2011 tax returns [...]