Federal Tax Policy

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

Bill to Give More Low-Income People Child Tax Credit

Nov 13, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The carried interest provisions may have gotten the headlines, but the AMT patch package that the House passed late last week also includes some important changes to the Child Tax Credit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a good rundown of how the tax credit works, and what's wrong with it. Essentially, the way it's structured now, millions of low-income families get no benefit at all, while many more are seeing their credit reduced by inflation.

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House Passes AMT Patch with Carried Interest

Nov 9, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The House voted 216-193 today to pass the (OMB Watch-endorsed) Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2007, the one-year, $51 billion AMT patch to keep 20 million additional taxpayers from having to pay the tax this year. It complies with PAYGO by raising enough to pay for the patch, the costly such compliance yet, re-affirming the House's commitment to PAYGO principles. And it includes the carried interest pay-for provision closing a tax loophole which actually allows equity fund managers to pay only 15 percent tax on their bonuses -- a lower rate than anyone except the most destitute Americans.

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Surreal Estate: House Hit with Hysterical Hyperbole

Nov 8, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Real Estate Roundtable has sent a letter to members of the House which amply demonstrates why the lobbying campaign to defend the carried interest taxloophole for fund managers is faring so poorly. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the revenue raised by closing this loophole for all fund managers combined -- of which real estate fund managers are but a fraction -- is roughly $2.6 billion annually. That's about a fifth of one one-thousandth of our economy.

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Veto Vertigo: Bad News, Good News

Nov 8, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Today, the White House issued a formal veto threat ($) against the AMT patch/tax extenders bill with carried interest and other payfors, which comes up for a House vote tomorrow. The veto-mad president, gunning down the FY 2008 bills that are, in the aggregate, two percent more than his spending requests -- on the grounds that the bills' spending levels are "excessive" -- points to the fact that the AMT patch is wholly offset with pay-for provisions and calls them "inappropriate." Dizzying, isn't it? He's hard to please, I guess.

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Fiscal Fortitude Award to ... Charlie Rangel

Nov 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Extremely honorable mention to ... Warren Buffett Per yesterday's blog about the fiscal fortitudinal challenge facing Congress, there is one person standing above the fray of the feckless: House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY). Asked if he intended to withdraw his carried interest provision as an AMT patch pay-for in the face of mixed signals from the Senate, he declared, ""Hell no, forget about it."

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AMT: Mother of All Tax Bills and Progeny

On Oct. 25, after a gestation period of nearly nine months, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) finally unveiled the Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 3970), his self-described "mother of all tax bills." The Rangel bill is a $930 billion, multi-faceted tax reform package that seeks to abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) on a revenue-neutral basis. The measure redistributes the tax burden away from lower- and middle-class taxpayers and toward the wealthy beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

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PAYGO, Carried Interest Take One Small Step

Nov 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

By a party-line vote of 22-13, the House Ways and Means Committee voted yesterday to approve a $77 billion, PAYGO-compliant, one-year Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, holding the number of taxpayers subject to AMT steady at four million and keeping nearly 20 million Americans from having to pay the AMT for the first time.

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Halloween Lexicon: Scared, with a College Education

Nov 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

In a moment of brilliance, after one of the Three Stooges asks another what "apprehensive" means, the other says, "Dat means scared ... with a college education, yuck yuck yuck." I was reminded of this exchange when I heard comments by some real logical folks at yesterday's House Ways & Means Committee mark-up of the AMT patch bill. "Nonsense" Exhibit A is on display below.

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Nonsense

Nov 2, 2007 by Craig Jennings

This is...well, it's just sad. Ranking member Jim McCrery (R-La.) said the AMT patch should not be offset because the patch is not a tax cut, rather is prevents a tax increase. Congress, he said, is in a "straight jacket" McCrery is a 16-year old explaining a fender bender to his parents. "No, see, what happened was I didn't crash into that parked car. It was parked illegally, right? So it prevented me from driving legally. It ran into me, really."

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AMT and TPM

Nov 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Check out Dana's TPM Cafe post on the AMT. After months of delays and anticipation, House Ways and Means Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) finally unveiled his self-described "mother of all tax bills" last week, the Tax Reduction and Reform Act. The revenue-neutral trillion-dollar bill proposes the abolition of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a package of "offsets" to pay for it, and a progressive redistribution of the regular income tax.

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