Can Romney Cut Taxes for the Rich Without Reducing Their Share of Taxes? Yes,...
President Obama says Governor Romney will cut taxes for high-income households by $250,000. Romney counters that under his plan, the rich will pay the same share of taxes they do today. Who’s right? It...
View ArticleFive Things You Should Know about Mitt Romney’s “$5 Trillion Tax Cut”
You’ve probably heard claims that Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion. Here are five things you should know about that figure: 1. $5 trillion is the gross amount of tax cuts he has proposed,...
View ArticleThe Real Lesson About Capping Itemized Deductions
The Tax Policy Center is back in the political cauldron, this time in the wake of its new research that looks at the revenue and distributional effects of caps on itemized deductions. TPC’s aim was to...
View ArticleUnderstanding TPC’s Analysis of Limiting Deductions
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...
View ArticleThe Ten Biggest Differences between the Romney and Obama Tax Plans
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....
View ArticleWhat Is Barack Obama’s Tax Plan?
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...
View ArticleA Disappointing Presidential Campaign Comes to an End
With the U.S. facing huge domestic policy challenges, one might have hoped for a serious debate on fiscal issues between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. One would have been deeply disappointed. Rather...
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Which presidents spend the most? You might be surprised.
Part of the election debate is about who can be trusted to tame the debt. Both candidates promise to be fiscally responsible and both provide maddeningly little detail on exactly how they would...
View ArticleFive Challenges for Obama’s Tough Second-Term
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...
View ArticleTaxes and Paul Ryan’s Budget
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...
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Is Buffett Rule a First Step Towards Tax Reform?
When the president first announced his Buffett Rule–that millionaires should pay at least 30 percent of their income in tax–in the State of the Union address in January, I had a strong sense of déjà...
View ArticleHow a Delay in the Debt Limit Will Change America’s Fiscal Politics
By now, you know the great taxmageddon story: At the end of the year, a lame duck Congress and a new or newly re-elected president will face the confluence of three extraordinary challenges—the...
View ArticleListen Closely When Romney Talks About Taxes
When Mitt Romney talks about his plan for tax reform, he is very careful to say two things: He wants to cut tax rates, and he wants high-income households to pay the same share of taxes they do today....
View ArticleObama Proposes Nothing Radical on Taxes. Too Bad.
President Obama today urged Congress to extend the 2001/2003 tax cuts for households making $250,000 or less and insisted lawmakers let those provisions expire for those making more. As the president...
View ArticleWhat the Dueling Senate Bills on Expiring Tax Cuts Would Mean for Taxpayers
As early as today, the Senate is likely to vote on the first of two competing efforts to temporarily extend tax cuts passed between 2001 and 2010. Neither the Democratic nor Republican measures will...
View ArticleIs it Time to Rethink the Tax Treatment of Charitable Organizations?
Here’s a word association game: I say tax-exempt public charity. You say house of worship, soup kitchen, or university. You probably don’t think about secret back-room political operations or...
View ArticleWhy Romney’s Tax Agenda Doesn’t Add Up, Even if it Isn’t a Middle-Class Tax Hike
A new paper by Brookings Institution scholars and Tax Policy Center colleagues Bill Gale, Adam Looney, and Samuel Brown is generating lots of media buzz. Even Barack Obama has put his spin on it with a...
View ArticleUnderstanding TPC’s Analysis of Governor Romney’s Tax Plan
The Tax Policy Center’s latest research report went viral last week, drawing attention in the presidential campaign and sparking a constructive discussion of the practical challenges of tax reform....
View ArticleThe Bowles-Simpson and Romney Tax Plans Have Almost Nothing in Common
In the recent contretemps over Mitt Romney’s tax plan, some Romney partisans have asserted that the Massachusetts governor’s revenue plank mimics the tax elements of the deficit reduction plan proposed...
View ArticleThe Ryan Budget Plan May Be the New Centerpiece of Campaign 2012
Already, the Romney campaign insists that voters should pay no attention to Paul Ryan’s fiscal agenda. It is the Romney-Ryan tax and budget plan, they say, not the Ryan-Romney plan. Good luck with...
View ArticleRyan’s Goal: Low Taxes and Small Government, not a Balanced Budget
Paul Ryan is often identified as a deficit hawk. And while he regularly talks about the importance of balanced budgets, that’s not what matters most to the GOP’s soon-to-be vice presidential nominee....
View ArticleShould Congress Curb Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds?
As politicians and their allies look for ways to finance tax rate cuts, a surprising option is getting a great deal of attention among conservatives: The tax exemption for municipal bonds. Mitt...
View ArticleFeldstein’s Analysis Doesn’t Refute TPC Findings, It Confirms Them
In a recent paper, we showed that any revenue-neutral tax reform that included Governor Romney’s specific tax cuts and that met his stated goal of not raising taxes on saving and investment would cut...
View ArticleWhat Happened to Tax Reform at Mitt Romney’s Convention?
Yes, political conventions are costly anachronisms. But, with patience and time, one can learn quite a lot about a political party by watching, or reading, what the confab produces. Thus, a few...
View ArticleWhat Was Missing from Obama’s Convention
We now know more about Joe and Jill Biden’s dating history than we do about what Biden and Barack Obama would do in a second term. I understand the desire to turn politics into just another episode of...
View ArticleWhat Mitt Romney Didn’t Learn from Ronald Reagan
If only Mitt Romney had paid attention to Ronald Reagan. There are so many things the former Massachusetts governor could learn from the former California governor’s presidential campaigns. But I have...
View ArticleWhy Do People Pay No Federal Income Tax?
The percentage of Americans who don’t pay income tax is making headlines again. However, the story hasn’t changed since I blogged about it last year and my TPC colleagues and I analyzed why in a longer...
View ArticleAbout the 47 Percent Who Don’t Pay Federal Income Tax: Mitt, Meet Andrea
About that 47 percent: Let me introduce you to Andrea. When I met her a couple of years ago, she was a home health aide who typically worked six days-a-week and often put in 50 hours. She loved her...
View ArticleWill Romney Scale Back Rate Cuts If Congress Won’t Curb Tax Breaks?
Yesterday, Kevin Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute economist and informal adviser to Mitt Romney, insisted that Romney would not raise taxes on low- and middle-income households in order to...
View ArticleWhat Did We Learn from the Presidential Debate? Not Much.
The breathlessly-hyped debate between President Obama and Governor Romney left me with an empty feeling. There were many words–oh, there were words– but even the most casual observer of the campaign...
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