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Tax News
Marty Feldstein is (Mostly) Right About Tax Expenditures
Kudos to Marty Feldstein, who this morning called for scaling back tax expenditures. These are highly-targeted tax breaks that are often little more than spending programs in mufti. Lawmakers of both parties love them, which is why they will reduce federal revenues this year by nearly $1 trilli...
Philanthropy and the Estate Tax
When President Obama proposed to cap the value of itemized deductions at 28 percent, the philanthropic sector came out foursquare against the idea, claiming that it would decimate charitable contributions. Cutting the tax savings from gifts to charities for high-income taxpayers would raise the afte...
Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
What should Congress do about the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year? That question is going to absorb much of Washington’s attention through the fall and—if present hyper-partisan trends continue—perhaps even beyond. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committe...
Raising the Social Security Retirement Age
If Social Security reform is political dynamite, the battle over whether to raise the retirement age may be the fuse. I got a hint of the passion behind this issue at an Urban Institute panel I moderated yesterday on Capitol Hill. In recent weeks, both Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who is the number #2 H...
In Life, Baseball and the Estate Tax, Timing is Everything
I came of age as a Royals fan, and I agree with George Brett’s comments at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, “I don’t like those Yankees still”. George Steinbrenner’s Yankees tortured my beloved Royals in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I’ll never forget my dad flipping across news ch...
We Can’t Always Get What We Want: Why Governing Americans is So Hard
The conventional wisdom is that Americans are fed up with their government. But our demands on policymakers are so inconsistent and irrational that we make governing nearly impossible. We hate big deficits, but oppose the actual tax increases or spending cuts that we need to dam the flood of the red...
Doing the Roth Roll: The Quiet Explosion in IRA Conversions
Back in 2005, Congress gave many high-income savers a great gift, with the proviso that they couldn’t unwrap the package until this year. The bequest allowed the affluent to convert their traditional tax-deferred Individual Retirement Accounts into tax-free Roth IRAs. Now that these lucky investor...
Why Taxes Are Going Up
It’s hard to imagine that spending restraint alone can solve America’s long-run fiscal woes. Facing an aging population and rising health care costs, the federal government will continue to expand even if policymakers take serious steps to trim spending. That’s why policy wonks are working so...
The Senate Struggles with Unemployment Benefits
When the Senate returns next week, it must confront a bit of unfinished business—what to do about extending unemployment benefits. As fans of the ongoing soap opera that is the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body already know, the Senate failed to pass the unemployment bill before rushing out of...
Happy New Year to the States?
While the rest of us are celebrating Independence Day, most states are commemorating the beginning of their new fiscal years. Forty-six states started their budget year on July 1 and most have managed to pass their tax and spending plans on time. In many legislatures, fiscal plans were accompanied w...