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Austria should not shy from lowering the corporate income tax rate sooner or even implementing a more ambitious tax reform to improve its tax competitiveness and contribute to greater economic growth.
Under the latest iteration of the House Build Back Better Act (BBBA), the average top tax rate on personal income would reach 57.4 percent, giving the U.S. the highest rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The intentions behind federal deductibility are undoubtedly pro-taxpayer. Unfortunately, that is not what happens in practice. Tax liability is not reduced. It is distorted.
Under the new Build Back Better framework, the United States would tax capital gains at the third-highest top marginal rate among rich nations, averaging nearly 37 percent.
Congress is debating new ways to raise revenue that would make the tax code more complex and more difficult to administer. The new proposals—imposing an alternative minimum tax on corporate book income, applying an excise tax on stock buybacks, and, at one point this week, a tax on unrealized capital gains for billionaires—are unreliable and highly complex ways to raise revenue.
When examining how tax policy impacts the economy, researchers typically look at labor supply and investment responses. One other channel through which taxes impact the economy has been less studied: innovation.
Congressional Democrats are reported to be weighing a special tax on the assets of billionaires to raise revenues to pay for their Build Back Better spending plan. There are two fundamental challenges to such a plan.
The legislation put forward by Democratic members of the House of Representatives would reverse many of the 2017 reforms while increasing burdens on businesses and workers.
On May 4th, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed legislation creating a 7 percent capital gains tax, to take effect next year. On November 2nd, Washington lawmakers will learn what voters think about it.
With corporate and individual rate hikes potentially out of the Build Back Better (BBB) reconciliation package, lawmakers are weighing alternative options to raise revenue. Rather than come up with untested proposals and complicated changes to the tax base, they should prioritize options that raise revenue while improving the structure of the tax code.
Raising taxes on stock-based compensation through a book income tax will disadvantage this form of compensation and produce more complexity in the tax system without providing benefits to workers.
One has to wonder how stable or sustainable the Democrats’ spending program can be if it must rely so heavily on the taxes paid by such a small number of taxpayers as in the top 1 percent.
Passage of Louisiana Amendments 1 and 2, which are aimed at the sales tax and individual and corporate income taxes, respectively, would substantially simplify the Pelican State’s tax code and provide tax relief in both the short and long term.
The Index provides lessons for policymakers when they are thinking of ways to remove distortions from their tax systems and remain competitive against their peers. The further up a country moves on the Index, the more likely it is to have broader tax bases, relatively lower rates, and policies that are less distortionary to individual or business decisions. Going the other way reveals a policy preference for narrow tax bases, special tax policy tools, and rules that make it difficult for compliance.
President Biden expanded and fundamentally changed the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for one year in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) passed in March 2021. Policymakers are now deciding the future of the expansion as part of the proposed reconciliation package, but a wide range of estimates for the effects of a permanent expansion is confusing the debate.
Inflation is often called a hidden tax, but in many states it yields a far more literal tax increase as tax brackets fail to adjust for changes in consumer purchasing power.
Two major provisions in the federal tax code have been limited since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017: the state and local tax (SALT) deduction and the home mortgage interest deduction (MID).