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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GOP Candidates' Tax Plans Reduce Taxes on Wealthy, Increase Deficits

As the media focuses its attention on the Republican Party’s presidential nominating contest, several tax and budget organizations have taken turns examining the candidates’ tax proposals. In January, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) released a report looking at the costs of each of the GOP contenders’ plans, and, just recently, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) scrutinized the distributional impacts of the candidates’ proposals. Both reports found that all of the contenders’ tax plans would disproportionately benefit the highest-income households and exacerbate budget deficits.

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Report Highlights Need for Additional Revenue Options

The current top federal income tax rate is 35 percent. But what would the top rate have to be in order to raise enough federal revenues to cover spending? A recent paper from the Tax Policy Center (TPC) and the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative sets out to answer that question, but its answer is incomplete. To bring federal revenues up from their current historic lows, Congress needs to consider more revenue options than just raising individual income tax rates.

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Is the President’s Budget Dead on Arrival? Maybe Not

On Feb. 13, budget season officially began with the release of the president’s budget, which was immediately heralded as dead on arrival. “If there was ever a year to ignore the president’s annual budget proposal, this is it,” proclaimed the National Journal (subscription required). While this may be the fate of the president’s tax proposals, many of the program funding levels in his budget have a chance of becoming law.

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Small Biz Owners: Big Businesses, Millionaires Not Paying Fair Share

Feb 7, 2012 by Gary Therkildsen*

The American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority released a new poll yesterday gauging small business owners’ opinions on taxes. On everything from the tax rates of the wealthy to corporations' exploitation of loopholes in the tax code, small business owners from across the nation say big businesses and millionaires aren’t paying their fair share.

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We Have Choices: Revenue Options

The federal government took in less money in 2011 than at any time in the last 60 years. State and local governments saw their revenues shrink, too. Why? Because the U.S. economy lost over eight million jobs and trillions in home equity when the housing bubble burst. Less economic activity means less money from sales taxes and business receipts. When a recession hits, the regular revenues government relies on fall dramatically.

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State of the Union's Call for Tax Fairness is a Good Start

Jan 26, 2012 by Sam Rosen-Amy

“The state of the union is getting stronger.” That is how President Obama characterized the current state of the union. But, as we wrote in our State of the Union preview on Tuesday, we still have a long way to go before the economy is back on its feet. In our article, we recommended doing away with the looming budget cuts, increasing taxes on capital gains and financial transactions, and using the additional revenue to pay for more infrastructure projects and public protections. So what fiscal issues did Obama talk about in his speech on Tuesday?

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IRS: Tax Gap Stands at Nearly Half a Trillion

Jan 18, 2012 by Gary Therkildsen*

Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released an updated analysis of the tax gap – the difference between the total amount in federal taxes owed by people and businesses, and the total paid. What did the IRS find? In 2006, the most recent year for which information is available, Americans underpaid their taxes by $450 billion. Extended over a decade, this could represent a shortfall of trillions, robbing the country of needed funds for infrastructure and other investments.

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"Do-Nothing" the Best Prescription for Deficit Reduction, but a Bad Approach for the Country

Congress was busy in the days leading up to the winter holidays. At the 11th hour, the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget finally passed, three months late, along with an extension of the payroll tax cut and a package of other assorted cuts and credits. The only real substantive legislative change coming out of the session was the death of the ethanol tax credit – because Congress failed to pass it. In the year ahead, this might be a theme: change only happens when Congress does nothing.

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Fiscal Policy: The Best and Worst of 2011

Welcome to OMB Watch's year-end fiscal policy review, where we give you a retrospective of the good, the bad, and the ugly of fiscal policy in 2011. Some acts, such as increased contracting transparency, made for enjoyable viewing, while others, like the congressional budgeting process, left us crying for a new script. Read on for our take on the year's highlights in revenue, budgeting, and spending.

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Super Committee "Failure" Is Anything But

Nov 28, 2011 by Craig Jennings

On Monday evening (Nov. 21), the Super Committee formally announced that it was unable to reach an agreement for reducing the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion. While others are decrying the lack of agreement by the Super Committee and calling it a failure, we at OMB Watch believe that each of us should, instead, be relieved.

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