From President Biden calling the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the “largest tax cut in American history,” to former President Trump claiming that Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times,” the campaign rhetoric on taxes may be sparking some confusion.
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The Fifth Circuit has affirmed states’ authority over their respective tax policies and has asserted that the offset clause—often called the “Tax Mandate”—of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has enough fiscal impact on a state’s budget so as to be coercive, as opposed to incentivizing.
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A new trade war could wipe out the benefits of pro-growth tax reform.
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The proposal is a good example of what can be done to reduce tax burdens on residents if spending is constrained. There are real, tangible benefits associated with enacting this pro-growth reform that should not be discounted.
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As members of Congress prepare to address the expiration of the TCJA, they should appreciate how revenues have evolved since 2017.
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While neither full expiration nor a deficit-financed full extension of the TCJA would be appropriate, lawmakers should consider the incentive effects of whichever tax reform they pursue. Because taxes affect the economy, they also affect the sustainability of debt reduction.
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Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) recently called a brief special legislative session to enact the fourth round of reductions to the Natural State’s individual and corporate income taxes. Legislators also passed a modest property tax reform proposal.
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The European Union’s experience with high inflation highlights the critical need for adaptive fiscal policies. Best practices drawn from the academic literature recommend implementing automatic adjustment mechanisms with a certain periodicity and based on price increases.
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Reviewing reported income helps to understand the composition of the federal government’s revenue base and how Americans earn their taxable income. The individual income tax, the federal government’s largest source of revenue, is largely a tax on labor.
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Taxing wealth has become a hot-button issue in today’s political discourse, promising to reshape economic equality. But what are the real-world implications of such policies?
Many developed countries have repealed their wealth taxes in recent years for a variety of reasons. They raise little revenue, create high administrative costs, and induce an outflow of wealthy individuals and their money. Many policymakers have also recognized that high taxes on capital and wealth damage economic growth.
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Summer has arrived and states are beginning to implement policy changes that were enacted during the legislative session (or are being phased in over time).
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Both candidates should provide clear and honest answers about their plans (or lack thereof) to address the nation’s urgent tax policy issues.
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Portland residents face some of the country’s highest taxes on just about every class of income. In an era of dramatically increased mobility for individuals and businesses alike, that’s not a recipe for success.
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President Biden is proposing extraordinarily large tax hikes on businesses and the top 1 percent of earners that would put the US in a distinctly uncompetitive international position and threaten the health of the US economy.
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The government won in Moore. However, given the narrow opinion of the court and the reasoning in the Barrett concurrence and the Thomas dissent, it seems likely that future rulings under other facts and circumstances could favor taxpayers instead.
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) significantly lowered the effective tax rates on business income, but the impact was not the same for C corporations and pass-through businesses.
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Neutral tax codes don’t play favorites or try to influence personal or business decisions but stick to what they’re best at – raising sufficient revenue through low rates and a broad base.
Former President Trump floated the possibility of entirely replacing the federal income tax with new tariffs. He also raised other ideas like eliminating taxes on tipped income and lowering the corporate tax rate by one percentage point.
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To stay competitive in an increasingly mobile post-pandemic world, states and localities must learn from the tax policy successes and failures of their neighbors and communities across the nation.
27 min read