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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Call-In For The Right Federal Budget

Mar 13, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Your voice is needed now to support a budget with the right priorities for all Americans. The ECAP coalition (read this Watcher article for more on ECAP) is mobilizing to promote a FY08 budget resolution that doesn't allow tax cuts for the wealthy and that makes enough room to fund programs for children, workers, education, and nutrition and housing issues. Let your representative know what you think about these programs and policies. They need to hear that their constituents will support them if they make the right decisions on the budget.

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6 Degrees of Privatization

Mar 12, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The contractor at Walter Reed who's taken much blame for the wretched conditions there is tangled up in IRS privatization, too. Unbossed has the story.

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Why the Bush Health Care Plan Won't Work

Mar 12, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Nathan Newman at TPM Cafe has a good post on health care costs. His most topical point is that the Bush health care tax package, which is ostensibly intended to reduce health care costs through financial incentives for health care consumers, is hopelessly misguided and beyond repair. Most health care spending occurs among a small minority of spenders who receive very expensive, intensive care that they likely see as not being optional. Incentives one way or the other probably won't make much of a difference.

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Policy Efficiency: Min. Wage vs. Tax Credits

Mar 9, 2007 by Dana Chasin

During the long pause between introduction of the minimum wage hike legislation in Congress and its (presumed) eventual passage, we have time to reflect on its efficiency vs. tax credits as a means of increasing the income of low-wage workers. The issue has arisen as some policymakers have wondered if expanding the Earned-Income Tax Credit might not be a more efficient means to this end. A recent treatment of the subject by Max Sawicky of the Economic Policy Institute, A Fish is Not a Fowl, walks us through almost every aspect of the trade-off, reaching this conclusion:

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IRS to Privatize Regulation

Mar 9, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Ace investigative tax reporter David Cay Johnston has tracked down another ridiculous IRS proposal: outsource the writing of IRS regulations to the people they regulate. Check out the story in today's New York Times. Money quote (from our executive director): Looking at the issue in its broadest terms, Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that tracks the Office of Management and Budget, warned that the Bush administration was turning over too much government responsibility to those it is supposed to be keeping an eye on.

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Senate Min. Wage Tax Package: a Closer Look

Mar 8, 2007 by Dana Chasin

House Ways and Means chair Charlie Rangel (D-NY) may be figuring that a public airing of the Senate's $8.3 billion tax package will break the impassse on the minimum wage bill now tied up in conference. Rangel has announced a March 14 hearing that will focus on Senate bill provisions he and Committee ranking member Jim McCrery (R-LA) have long objected to, specifically, those which:

change the tax treatment of certain leases entered into before March 12, 2004, i.e., very retroactively

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Like Father, Like Son

Mar 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Bill Gates announced his opposition to estate tax repeal yesterday. Gates' father, Bill Gates Sr., has been a leader in the movement to oppose estate tax repeal and reductions.

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Sen. Finance Cmte. Tacitly OKs Pay-Go Regime Change

Mar 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

On Mar. 2, Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) and ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) submitted a Committee "Budget Views and Estimates" ($) letter to the Senate Budget Committee that conveys very few specific views, with these notable exceptions:

AMT Relief: the AMT hold-harmless provisions "will require an extension for calandar years 2007 and 2008" -- a development we recently noted

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AMT: Seeking Permanent Reform, Short of Repeal

Mar 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

At 2 p.m. today, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), chair of the House Ways and Means Suncommittee on Select Revenue Measures, holds the first hearing (webcast here) of the 110th Congress on AMT reform, meaning repeal. Currently, the debate about how to keep AMT liability from engulfing the middle class seems to vaccilate between between:

the temporary solution -- the hold-harmless-via-patches strategy favored by leading Senate Democrats, who have endorsed a $115 billion, two-year patch for 2007 and 2008

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AMT Wonkery

Mar 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Joint Committee on Taxation released a report on the AMT yesterday describing how the AMT works, a brief legislative history, and why it's affecting more and more middle-class tax payers every year. It's really a good primer on the tax.

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