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The Great Unknowns

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Jonathan Cohn - Feb. 20 (News Analysis) - On Sunday night or Monday morning, the administration is going to post a health care proposal, as the New York Times and Associated Press first reported earlier in the week. Exactly what this proposal will represent isn't so clear. It's going to be some kind of compromise between the bills that the House and Senate have passed already. But it could be the White House's idea of a what the House and Senate should find acceptable--or it could be the White House's idea of what House and Senate leaders already have indicated they find acceptable.

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Tax Rates For America's Top 400 Earners Fell As Income Soared In 2007, According To IRS

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:35:14 -0800

Huffington Post - Feb. 17 (News Report) - The average top 400 rich person made $344 million and paid only $57 million in taxes. Maybe I have no conception of money, but $57 million doesn't sound like peanuts to me. Eliminate the the tax caps for Social Security and Medicare, make it a flat %

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Republicans on Wrong Side of Public Opinion

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Feb. 09 (News Analysis) - An analysis of 25 key issues shows that Republicans tend to be on the wrong side of public opinion more often than the Obama administration.

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Why Is the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Massive UBS Tax Evasion Scheme the Only One Heading to Prison?

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 07 (News Analysis) - A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax-evasion scheme in US history is preparing to head to prison tomorrow to begin serving a forty-month federal sentence. Bradley Birkenfeld first came forward to US authorities in 2007 and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts. We speak with his attorney, Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center.

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Senate's Proposed Health Care Tax Isn't Aimed at the Rich, It's Aimed at You

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Bob Herbert - Jan. 04 (News Analysis) - The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do.

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Would the Senate Democrats’ proposed excise tax on “highcost” employer-paid health insurance benefits be progressive?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ctj.org - Dec. 11 (Special Report) - Senate Democrats have proposed a new, very-high-rate excise tax on employer-paid health insurance benefits that exceed certain levels. The goal is to force employers to eliminate such “excessive” benefits. Congressional analysts assume that employers then will replace their employees’ lost health insurance benefits with increased taxable cash wages. Proponents of the plan argue that this trade-off would be a progressive reform to the tax code. Based on data from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and our own separate analysis, we conclude the following: # Even if employers do replace all of the dropped health insurance benefits with taxable wages, the result will be to make the overall federal tax system less progressive than it is now.

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State Spending Done Through the Tax Code Needs to Be Reviewed

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ctj.org - By Cdavis - Nov. 13 (Special Report) - The special breaks littered throughout state tax codes — or “tax expenditures,” as they are frequently called — are an enormous and often overlooked part of government’s operations. Although the primary purpose of a tax system is to raise the revenue needed to pay for public services, every state, as well as the federal government, also uses its tax system to accomplish a variety of other policy goals. Encouraging job creation, subsidizing private industry research, and promoting homeownership are just a few of the countless ends pursued via special subsidies contained in state tax codes. Rather than having anything to do with fair or efficient tax policy, these tax credits, exemptions, and other provisions are actually much more akin to government spending programs — hence the term, “tax expenditures.”

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Tax Code Woefully Out of Date on Energy Policy

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Emily Badger - Sep. 18 (Special Report) - From 2002 through 2008, the U.S. federal government spent about $72 billion subsidizing fossil fuel industries, much of those benefits embedded in arcane tax codes written in another era, for a different kind of energy economy.

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Feds Build Criminal Cases Against US Tax Evaders

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNBC.com - By Lynnley Browning The New York Times - Aug. 14 (News Report) - Federal prosecutors are building criminal cases against 150 wealthy American clients of the Swiss banking giant UBS as part of a continuing investigation into tax evasion. In February, UBS agreed to pay $780 million to settle charges that it had helped American clients evade taxes on nearly $20 billion hidden in offshore accounts.

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US, Swiss Cement Deal On Secret UBS Bank Accounts

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jessica Gresko - Aug. 12 (News Report) - The Swiss and U.S. governments announced a deal Wednesday to settle American demands for the identities of suspected tax dodgers, despite Switzerland's vaunted bank secrecy. But they kept all details under wraps, including how many of the 52,000 names sought by the IRS from banking giant UBS AG will be revealed.

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Stimulus:How Fast We're Spending $792 Billion

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Christopher Flavelle, Jeff Larson - Aug. 05 (Investigative Report) - The success of the federal stimulus program may hinge on the speed with which the government is able to distribute the billions authorized by Congress. Unlike some other estimates of the cost of the stimulus, which are based on spending projections, we took our numbers from the actual budget authority issued by Congress — $792 billion and change. We'll be tracking the progress of stimulus payments made by federal agencies weekly.

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TARP IG Reports Underscore Need for Better Transparency in Financial Bailout

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ombwatch.org - Jul. 29 (Investigative Report) - Two recent reports by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), Neil Barofsky, provide useful information and stand in sharp contrast to the Treasury Department's attempt to provide comparable transparency for the program, also known as TARP. One report clearly presents existing TARP information, while the other supplies new data that Treasury should be providing. In both cases, the reports highlight changes Treasury should make to how it conducts and presents TARP data. To date, TARP, the most prominent element of the larger initiative colloquially known as "the bailout," has been a relatively secretive program.

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French panel to recommend carbon tax on fuel

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

timesoftheinternet.com - Jul. 23 (News) - A French experts' panel is to recommend introducing a carbon tax on fuel from January 2010, as part of a government drive to slash global warming emissions, the group's head said on Wednesday.

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Ten Reasons Undocumented Should File Income Taxes

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New America Media - By Elena Shore - Jun. 22 (News Report) - Many undocumented immigrants see paying taxes as a catch-22 -- they need to file income tax returns if they are ever going to qualify for legalization, but they believe filing taxes may expose them to deportation.

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Northwest's biofuel boom goes bust ?

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - By Scott Learn, The Oregonian - Jun. 07 (News Report) - The biofuel downturn has been a national phenomenon, Van't Hof noted. Oregon's plants are likely to be restructured under Chapter 11 proceedings or sold, not shuttered. And the federal plans for more biofuel use in coming years leave Oregon in a good position to capitalize as the industry grows, he said.

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The Real Tax Outrage

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Mike Papantonio - Apr. 21 (News Analysis) - The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) found billions of dollars hidden in offshore corporate tax havens. This would no doubt upset the teabaggers to know that there is more than 100 billion dollars worth of tax shelters offshore created by many of Santelli's Wall Street pals. We don't have money to pay for schools, teachers, new roads, and health care, but billions of dollars are sitting in no-ask no-pay corporate tax shelters offshore.

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Teabaggers Stray Off Topic, HuffPosters Report

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Apr. 19 (News Report) - While a majority of the protesters who attended tea parties across the nation convened to oppose to taxes, many conservatives viewed these gatherings as a platform to voice their other political grievances. Dan Diviney, one of over 2,500 HuffPost citizen reporters who signed up to cover the Tea Parties, found that pervasive griping about taxes served as a backdrop for other issues that elicited more vehement outrage from attendees; the majority of citizen reporters submitted dispatches that illustrated a similar environment at their local event.

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Tax Code Changes: Wealth Transfer — Aggressively Progressive?

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Richard Rubin - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - But trying to achieve fairness through the tax code is neither simple nor economically risk-free. The income tax is a crude, imperfect tool that doesn’t address the underlying causes of income disparity. Additionally, the tax system’s complexity as well as the wide regional differences in the cost of living make it difficult for lawmakers to effectively define rich and poor using a single national income standard.

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No proposal to end taxes for seniors making less than $50,000

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - President Obama's campaign pledge to end taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 has fallen off the radar. It wasn't part of the tax cuts in the economic stimulus bill, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It wasn't in Obama's first budget outline, which was approved by Congress on April 2, 2009. And it's not part of any proposed legislation that we can find. Today, on Tax Day, Obama gave a speech in which he talked about his other tax promises and how he wants to reshape the tax code to make it simple and more efficient. But he never mentioned his promise of curtailing the income tax for seniors. The Obama administration has done other things for seniors. Thanks to the stimulus bill, for example, everyone who gets Social Security benefits will receive a $250 check from the government in May. But the bold promise to end taxes for seniors if they make less than $50,000 seems to be forgotten.

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Offshore Tax Havens: A State-By-State Breakdown Of The Cost To Taxpayers

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Arthur Delaney - Apr. 15 (Special Report) - A Senate report estimated in 2008 that the United States loses up to $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens (PDF). In a report released Wednesday, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group offers a state-by-state breakdown of the cost to taxpayers of tax revenue lost to "shell companies and sham headquarters" in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

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FreedomWorks' Long History Of Teabagging

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Brian Beutlar - Apr. 15 (News Analysis) - We haven't written much about the Tea Party Movement, because it's always seemed fairly blown out of proportion. Conservatives compare it to an anti-tax version of the Iraq war protests, but those protests drew scores of thousands of people into the streets and the "tea parties" that have occurred thus far haven't been nearly that large.

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Tax Code Changes: Industry in the Cross Hairs

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Joseph J. Schatz - Apr. 14 (News Analysis) - Energized by a global summit meeting two weeks ago where world leaders called for a crackdown on abusive tax havens, Congress seems likely this year to debate significant elements of the federal income tax code as it affects corporations. But it’s not likely to be the debate those companies had been hoping for.

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Pulp Nonfiction

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - Apr. 03 (News Analysis) - Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies. And get this: even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit.

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Tax clawbacks: doing it right

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Interfluidity - By Steve Randy Waldman - Mar. 18 (News Analysis) - ... a tax clawback does represent a kind of escalation. It sits awkwardly with norms and ideals that are less a matter of law than we think but that are nevertheless an important part of American political culture. In our better moments, we dislike "collective punishment" and try not to change the rules of the game out from under people midstream. On balance, I think the benefits of a well designed tax clawback could exceed its costs. But a poorly designed clawback would set a corrosive precedent for no other purpose than to salve and misdirect public rage.

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Energy Taxes and the Electric Grid

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Oil Drum - Jan. 16 (News Analysis) - The tax code is not at all generous with respect to investments in the electric grid. The effective tax rate on these investments is very close to the unadjusted statutory tax rate of about 39%. If investment is to be encouraged in the electric grid, Dr. Metcalf believes that this tax rate must be lowered.

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