Revenue & Spending

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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more news

Taxing Capital Income Increases Revenue, Reduces Inequality

In September, President Obama released a deficit reduction package for consideration by the congressional Super Committee that included a new tax reform recommendation regarding millionaires. Dubbed the "Buffett Rule," the proposal states, “No household making over $1 million annually should pay a smaller share of its income in taxes than middle-class families pay,” and it would address a long-standing disparity between the taxation of labor income and investment income. Indeed, going beyond the Buffett Rule and taxing capital income on par with labor income would not only bring in much needed revenue, it would help to reduce income inequality, a source of economic inefficiency.

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Repatriation Tax Holiday Is Not a Jobs Plan

Congressional Republicans consistently push tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy as a means to create jobs. One measure that is receiving increased attention is a tax break for corporations that park profits overseas to avoid paying taxes. Despite Republicans' insistence that a tax holiday would bring these profits back to the U.S. and that corporations would then invest in jobs here, the evidence tells a different story.

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IRS Enforcement Likely to Take Hit in 2012 Approps

Oct 14, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

The tax mans taken all my dough / and left me in my stately home / lazing on a sunny afternoon.

Reporting last week in a piece titled, "Bipartisanship lives! And it will likely cost taxpayers money," Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post notes that although Democrats and Republicans are battling over the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget, "there's one big thing that both parties already agree on: cutting funding for the [Internal Revenue Service (IRS)]." This shortsighted move is likely to end up costing the government money (at a time when every penny is needed) because roughly half of the cuts are coming out of the agency's enforcement budget.

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Financial Taxes Can Raise Revenues, May Help Stabilize Markets

The congressional Super Committee, tasked with forging a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction package by Thanksgiving, is currently deliberating on which revenues – if any – to raise and to include in its plan. With Wall Street at the center of the 2008 economic collapse, the committee should look to a pair of revenue options that would fulfill the dual roles of addressing risks to the economy posed by Wall Street and raising much needed revenue: a financial speculation tax and a financial crisis responsibility fee on large financial institutions.

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Congress Should Streamline Budget Process

Along with all the attention the federal budget is receiving these days, the budget process itself is coming under greater scrutiny. Both the House and Senate budget committees held hearings recently to discuss how to reform the budget process. The panels featured former budget directors and academics, but curiously, there was little talk of fixing the immediate problem of budgetary gridlock.

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Obama’s Deficit Reduction Plan Has Room for Improvement

The nation is less than two months away from what could be a seminal moment in its fiscal history. In late November, the new “Super Committee,” formed by the recent debt ceiling deal, will release its set of recommendations to cut the federal budget deficit by $1.2 trillion. In an effort to influence the hectic debate the committee’s recommendations are sure to start, President Obama released on Sept. 19 a $3.3 trillion deficit reduction plan as a package of recommendations for the committee to adopt.

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Study Shows Private Contractors Usually Cost More than Public Employees

Conventional wisdom in Washington dictates that the private sector can always provide services at a lower cost than the federal government. A new study from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), however, turns conventional wisdom on its head, demonstrating that the government rarely reaps the purported benefits of lower costs through the outsourcing of service work. In fact, POGO found that, on average, the government pays service contractors more than 1.8 times the amount it pays federal employees with the same education, doing the same job and performing similar tasks.

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What Happens When We Tax the "Job Creators"

Sep 22, 2011 by Craig Jennings

I'm not sure what a "job creator" is, but for Republicans leveling criticism at Obama's recent deficit reduction proposal, a "job creator" is simply a high-income earner. They argue that because many small business owners file their taxes as individuals, if individual income tax rates on individuals are increased, it will reduce the investment capital available for small businesses to hire more people.

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Obama's New Deficit Reduction Plan Unapologetically Balanced

Sep 19, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Earlier today, President Obama released a new plan for reducing the federal deficit, or the shortfall between revenues and spending. The plan is technically a set of recommendations for the Super Committee, which Congress created last month to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. Obama’s plan isn’t ideal, but it is easily one of the best set of deficit reduction recommendations to come out of Washington in a while.

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Senate Committee Proposes Transparency Cuts

Sep 16, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

There’s a grand tradition in DC: the Friday afternoon news dump. Press secretaries from across the District save up any bad news, and then release it on Friday after the major news deadlines have passed. That way, articles won’t show up until the weekend, when most people aren't paying attention. In yet another example of this, the Senate Appropriations Committee, responsible for the government’s yearly funding bills, released four bills this afternoon, all of which had passed out of committee yesterday. And, sure enough, there, buried in one of the bills, is the Senate effectively slashing funding for transparency projects.

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