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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GOP on the Verge of Imploding

Jul 28, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

Drama continues to unfold on Capitol Hill as the hot summer heat seems to be getting to members of Congress. We posted yesterday of a "showdown" meeting of members of the long-stalled pension reform conference committee that took place last night. But the meeting did not go as conference chairman Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY) planned as House GOP conferees boycotted the meeting

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Minimum Wage Bill Moving Through House

Jul 28, 2006 by Craig Jennings

The House is unexpectedly expected to vote on a minimum wage bill today. House GOP members are trying to tie the $2.10 minimum wage hike to a health insurance provision affecting small businesses. There is also speculation that Republicans are going to attempt attaching a permanent estate tax cut to the bill. BNA (subscription required):

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Pension Conference Committee Now Part of Estate Tax Saga

Jul 27, 2006 by Craig Jennings

The conference committee considering the pension bill will hold a vote on whether or not to include a set of tax provisions - know as "extenders" - in the pension bill being considered. By moving the extenders out of the pension bill, the GOP leadership hopes use the extenders as a "sweetener" for an estate tax reduction bill to garner the 60 votes needed overcome a filibuster. Bloomberg:

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Treasury Dept: Sorry, No Free Lunch

Jul 26, 2006 by Craig Jennings

Supply-siders argue that tax cuts do not cause budget deficits because they create so much economic growth that total tax revenues will increase, even at the lower tax rates. In short: tax cuts pay for themselves. The Treasury Department released a report today which analyzes the economic effect of President Bush's tax cuts and concludes that tax cuts do not, in fact, pay for themselves. From page ii of the Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Department of Treasury's A Dynamic Analysis of Permanent Extension of the President’s Tax Relief:

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More on the Latest Attempt to Gut the Estate Tax

Jul 26, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

Things are moving quickly in Congress this week as repeated, desperate attempts to pass a drastic reduction in the estate tax before the end of the year continue to unfold.

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Estate Tax Update

Jul 26, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

Congress has yet again taken up efforts to dismantle the estate tax. This time, the tricksy, anti-equity gang attempted to add estate tax reduction to the pension bill now being negotiated in conference. But, thanks to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who didn't want to see a highly controversial amendment deep-six the pension bill and professing concerns for transparency, refused to sign the conference report. From BNA (subscription required):

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Does The IRS Have It Out For Poor Americans?

Jul 26, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

Just this morning I stumbled across this enlightening report released earlier this year from the folks up at Syracuse University who run the TRAC database. (For those who don't follow arcane data analysis groups as closely as OMB Watch does, TRAC is the Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse - a data gathering and analysis group that uses the Freedom of Information Act to access and analyze government information. See them at http://trac.syr.edu.)

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Last-Minute Attempt to Add Estate Tax to Pension Reforms Fails

Over the last week, Capitol Hill has been abuzz with speculation that House and Senate GOP leaders were engaging in a last-ditch effort to attach a provision gutting the estate tax to a sensitive and complicated pension reform conference report. The sneaky move failed, however, as Senate Majority Leader Bill First (R-TN) announced today he could not convince a number of key Republicans, particularly Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), to support it. In related news, President Bush has moved to gut IRS estate tax enforcement.

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Congress Looks for New Ways to Cut Taxes

Jul 25, 2006 by Craig Jennings

Running out of ways to cut federal taxes, Congress looks to other jurisdictions. A bi-partisan effort to give federal tax breaks to corporations at the expense of the states has gained the attention of the Washington Post editorial board:

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De Facto Estate Tax Repeal for Some

Jul 24, 2006 by Craig Jennings

David Cay Johnston reports in the Sunday New York Times that the IRS has plans to eliminate 157 of the most productive IRS employees. And, those IRS employees are estate tax lawyers and the staff who support their auditing activities. The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.

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