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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Unemployment Insurance in Need of Overhaul

As the anticipated severity of the recession increases and unemployment estimates for 2009 reach as high as eight percent, Congress is under increased pressure to enact an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, perhaps as early as the current lame-duck session. Yet a broader overhaul of the UI program is needed to improve this important safety-net program for American workers.

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Grassley Asks Treasury IG to Look Into Tax Rule Change

Nov 17, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), has asked the Treasury Department's Inspector General to initiate an investigation into the "facts and circumstances" that led Treasury to issue a revised guidance to tax code section that could give banks $140 billion in tax breaks. On Thursday, we noted our indignation about this quiet change in the tax rules governing the implementation of section 382 of the tax code. Grassley, however, thinks something other than Executive overreach may be at work.

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Time to Get Tough on the Swiss

Nov 14, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Back in August, I blogged about a report issued by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about how foreign banks, specifically large European banks, were helping wealthy Americans evade U.S. taxes.

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Treasury Overrides Congress Through Fiat, Giving Banks $140 Billion in Tax Breaks

Nov 13, 2008 by Craig Jennings

This is just unacceptable:

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Stimulus on the Installment Plan

Nov 7, 2008 by Craig Jennings

On Thursday, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she is considering a two-stage economic stimulus strategy. The first would be a bill totalling $60 billion to $100 billion (composed of what exactly, she didn't say) and would be passed in November during a lame-duck session of Congress.

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Notes from the Economy: Unemployment

Nov 7, 2008 by Craig Jennings

It's up from 6.1 percent in September to 6.5 percent in October. Also according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy lost 240,000 jobs in October, as the year-to-date number of jobs shed rose to 1.2 million.

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GAO IDs Top Transition Issues

Nov 6, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has created a website "designed to help make the [presidential] transition an informed and smooth one across the federal government." In addition to suggesting myriad policies for various governmental issues like the long-term fiscal outlook,

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Tax Cheats Are Rich

Nov 4, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

A paper released last month by tax guru Joel Slemrod and Andrew Johns of the IRS analyzing "newly available data from the IRS's most recent comprehensive study of individual income tax noncompliance, the National Research Program, [assesses] the distributional consequences of income tax noncompliance in the U.S. federal income tax for the tax year 2001."

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Out of Crisis, Opportunity

Nov 4, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Writing in The New Yorker, Steve Coll meditates on the significance of the reactions certain political élites who are now lining up in favor using the government to better the economy. The country is fortunate in one respect: the sudden buckling of financial safeguards has put just about everyone in touch with his inner New Dealer. Even Alan Greenspan recently confessed to Congress a crisis of faith in self-regulation. Meanwhile, former free-market true believers in the Bush Administration have tossed out money from the public vault like looters... [...]

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Joint Economic Committee Holds Hearing on the Need for Economic Stimulus

On Oct. 30, a group of economic experts testified before the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) on the necessity and scope of a second economic stimulus package. While committee members and witnesses agreed on the severity of the ongoing economic situation, there was a clear ideological divide on which course of action Congress should pursue. At the center of the divide were the competing concerns for families facing certain hardships inflicted by a contracting economy and for the consequences of an increase in the federal budget deficit, which would be required to aid those families and help reverse the current economic trend.

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