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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Fox News Health Care Reform 'Calculator' Spits Out Nonsense

Jan 25, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

Introducing Texas Instrument's new TI-Propaganda

How much will implementation of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) provisions cost you as a taxpayer? If you want an accurate number, don't look to Fox News. Nick Kasprak over at the Tax Foundation's Tax Policy Blog recently provided a thorough takedown of the news organization's new health care reform "calculator", which is replete with faulty methodology, spelling errors, and meaningless graphics.

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OMB Watch Criticizes House Vote on Estate Tax Amendment

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2010—OMB Watch today criticized the House's Dec. 16 failure to adopt Rep. Earl Pomeroy's (D-ND) estate tax amendment to the Bush tax cut compromise reached by President Obama and congressional Republicans. The vote against the Pomeroy amendment indicates that the nation's fiscal priorities have been cast aside in favor of the estate planning needs of the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans.

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All Your Tax Cuts Are Belong to Us

Dec 13, 2010 by Craig Jennings

This chart of average tax cuts per income group under several plans to extend various provisions of the Bush tax cuts, via the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, made my jaw drop this afternoon.

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Tell Congress: Don't Gut the Estate Tax!

Dec 9, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

As you could probably tell from our post on Tuesday, we think the recent compromise unnecessarily harms the estate tax, helping millionaires and making the tax code even more regressive. But we need your help to convince Congress that gutting the estate tax is bad policy. Below is a copy of an action alert we just sent out; if you didn't get it, please take a second to read through it and call your senators and representatives. Tell them to fight for a strong estate tax!

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Obama Tax Cut Compromise Capitulates on Estate Tax

Dec 7, 2010 by Gary Bass*

President Obama's tax cut deal with congressional Republicans, if enacted by Congress, will achieve what President George W. Bush could not get done: create a path to effectively kill the estate tax.

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Colbert Reminds Us What the Estate Tax is Really About

Dec 2, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

On The Colbert Report yesterday, host Stephen Colbert mocked conservative pundits and politicians ginning up fear over the return of the estate tax in 2011. Recently, conservatives have been bemoaning the potential impacts of a returning estate tax on the decision-making processes of families with wealthy relatives near death. Colbert empathized with "all those innocent, God-fearing people who are willing to kill Nana for the extra cash."

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$3.3 Trillion Deficit Reduction Plan Set to Take Effect Jan. 1

Dec 2, 2010 by Craig Jennings

One deficit plan that's not getting much attention, and one which can easily pass a Republican-controlled Congress, is the one that the Republican-controlled Congress approved in 2001 (and further augmented in 2003): The 2001-2003 Bush tax cuts.

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OMB Watch Pans Deficit Commission Plan

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1, 2010—OMB Watch today panned the plan proposed by the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to reshape the nation’s fiscal priorities. While the plan contains some praiseworthy provisions targeted at the tax code and the federal budget process, overall, it represents an unfortunate step backward in meeting the needs of the nation’s working families.

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The $80 Billion Middle Class Tax Hike

Nov 9, 2010 by Craig Jennings

In this week's Watcher, we ponder the fate of fiscal policy in the lame duck session of Congress set to commence on Nov. 15. Our article and indeed most of the punditry, analysis, news, and campaign rhetoric has all but completely ignored the fate of some $80 billion in tax breaks for the middle class.

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CRS: Permanently Extending Bush Tax Cuts to Cost $5 Trillion

Nov 1, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

In a report released last week, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) revised the total cost of permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts to $5.048 trillion over the next ten years. The revised amount, which is significantly higher than the $2.8 trillion figure CRS reported in September, takes into account the cost of servicing the debt due to lost revenue and indexing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to inflation.*