Posts tagged Income tax

The Deal with the Deal

79
4 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

We went right up to the edge of the cliff, peered into the abyss, and turned back. For now. But what exactly came out of the cliff-​​averting bill? Let’s take a look at the details, as well as their poten­tial ramifications.

First, because so many peo­ple want to keep score, who “won” this bat­tle? Nobody. Seri­ously. There are no win­ners here. Pres­i­dent Obama, who had the trump cards (though not Trump’s endorse­ment), gave an aston­ish­ing amount of ground. Again. Repub­li­cans didn’t get a lot of what they wanted, either. And all of us lost because this deal kicked most of the prob­lems down the road a few months.

Any­way, on to the details. 

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Do Any Studies Show that Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves?

38
5 months ago
by Reed Davis in

I con­cluded a prior post on my own blog with the fol­low­ing statement:

As I men­tioned, I have yet to find a sin­gle eco­nomic study that pur­ports to show evi­dence that any income tax cut has ever paid for itself. If any­one who reads this should know of one, please leave a com­ment with a link to that study. Thanks.

I received a cou­ple of replies to that request but nei­ther of them focused on income tax cuts in the United States. One focused on cap­i­tal gains tax cuts and the other focused on coun­tries with rel­a­tively weak tax author­i­ties where tax cuts might increase com­pli­ance (like Rus­sia). In any case, I replied to both. I also have not found an eco­nomic study that shows an income tax cut pay­ing for itself from any other source. How­ever, I am con­tin­u­ing to search for such a study and have posted links to any related infor­ma­tion that I’ve found at this link. I believe that only one of those links is to a study that pur­ports to show a tax cut that paid for itself. It is a paper pub­lished by Laf­fer Asso­ciates titled “The Onslaught From The Left, Part III: The Cap­i­tal Gains Tax”. (more…)

Meme Watch: The Half Who Don’t Pay Taxes

90
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Last fall, we began to hear the drum­beat of “half of all Amer­i­cans pay no taxes”. Specif­i­cally, it was that they pay no fed­eral income taxes, though that detail was often lost in the rhetoric. The topic became a hot one among the Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates start­ing in mid-​​August, 2011.

With Tax Day nearly upon us, it seems worth­while to inves­ti­gate this topic in more depth.

Since this is a meme watch arti­cle, let’s start by look­ing at what was going on at that time that would trig­ger the meme’s for­ma­tion. (more…)

Does Buffett Pay a Lower Tax Rate than his Secretary?

24
1 year ago
by Reed Davis in

Editor’s Note: Reed Davis has returned with an Op-​​Ed for us at Log­a­rchism. As always, we wel­come con­tri­bu­tions from our readership.

The Jan­u­ary 23rd issue of Time fea­tures War­ren Buf­fett on its cover and con­tains a story titled “War­ren Buf­fett Is on a Rad­i­cal Track”. Fol­low­ing is an excerpt:

Buf­fett paid a tax rate of only 11% on adjusted gross income of $62,855,038 in 2010. (After deduc­tions, most of which were for char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions, he paid a still low 17% rate on his $39,814,784 of tax­able income; his office staff, mean­while, paid per­cent­ages some­where in the 30s.)

Buf­fett dis­cussed this in an op-​​ed that he wrote that was pub­lished in the New York Times on August 14. He dis­cusses the exact method by which he cal­cu­lated these tax rates in a let­ter sent to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Huel­skamp (R-​​Fowler, KS). (more…)

The Ryan Game

1
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-​​WI) Announces the GOP Bud­get Plan

This week, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​WI) pub­lished a bud­get pro­posal called “The GOP Path to Pros­per­ity.” As I men­tioned on Mon­day in “Shut­down Show­down,” the pro­posal nei­ther addresses the issues in the 2011 or 2012 bud­gets, nor makes real­is­tic assump­tions about the expected eco­nomic impacts of the pro­posed changes.

But that was a really hand-​​wavy, dis­mis­sive aside to the now-​​almost-​​certain shut­down. Today, I’d like to elab­o­rate fur­ther on Ryan’s proposal.

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<span class="dquo">“</span>Fair” Unbalanced?

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in
U.S. Rep. John Linder with the current Tax cod...

Rep John Lin­der hold­ing the 133 page Fair Tax Act in con­trast to the cur­rent U.S. tax code. (Image via Wikipedia)

Last week I described four inci­den­tal bur­dens that arise from income taxes:

  • They con­flict with key ele­ments of the Bill of Rights
  • Cal­cu­lat­ing the cor­rect amount of tax costs many tax­pay­ers sig­nif­i­cant amounts of money and/​or time
  • The rates, cou­pled with the large num­ber of col­lec­tion points, cre­ate incen­tive for tax evasion
  • The under­ground econ­omy is entirely untaxed (at a fed­eral level)

In order to alle­vi­ate those bur­dens, sev­eral peo­ple have pro­posed forms of con­sump­tion taxes, rang­ing from value-​​added taxes (VATs) to national sales taxes. One of these pro­pos­als is called “Fair­Tax.” The notion of “fair tax­a­tion,” as I men­tioned two weeks ago, is a mat­ter of per­spec­tive. Nonethe­less, as cur­rently pro­posed, Fair­Tax has some degree of progressivity.

(more…)

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