Individual Taxes Archive
Taxing Capital Gains at Death at A Higher Rate Than During Life
May 13, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares President Joe Biden and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) have proposed different ways to tax unrealized capital gains every year. Their shared goal is understandable, with trillions of dollars escaping income tax under current law. But each plan raises serious administrative and legal problems. We suggest a simpler, more effective approach:
How Democrats Who Want To Tax The Very Wealthy Are Taking A Page From Thomas Paine
May 10, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Did President Biden and other Democrats read 18th century revolutionary Tom Paine before they proposed their taxes on extreme wealth? Hard to know, but the striking similarities between their efforts to tax the mega-rich and Paine’s suggest they might have. It turns out that Paine, who was too revolutionary for most of his
The Elephant in The Room: The Gap Between Federal Retiree Benefits and Taxes Paid
May 5, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares President Trump was afraid to tackle the dominant set of spending and tax issues facing the federal government. Ditto, so far, for President Biden. Under current law, the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that pay out crucial benefits to retirees will go insolvent by roughly 2034 and 2026, respectively, triggering large mandatory
Joe Manchin Just Made A Great Argument In Support of A Carbon Tax
May 3, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin set off environmentalists last week when he said tax credits to subsidize the purchase of electric vehicle (EV) tax credits are “ludicrous.” His argument: It makes no sense for government to subsidize EV purchases when demand for the vehicles far exceeds supply. In the short run, Manchin is
Congress Can More Modestly Expand The Child Tax Credit And Still Help Very Low-Income Families
April 28, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares As President Biden and congressional Democrats make another push to reach a compromise on a social spending, climate change, and tax bill, a key issue is what they’ll do with the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The Tax Policy Center analyzed five options that show how lawmakers could partially restore the expanded 2021 version
How to Undertake Reform of the Charitable Deduction
April 28, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Among its many changes, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act substantially increased the share of federal income taxpayers taking the standard deduction, leaving fewer tax filers claiming the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Ever since, some lawmakers have sought ways to incentivize giving for those who don’t itemize. It’s unlikely that Congress
Volunteer Tax Prep Is A Crash Course in Pandemic Tax Policy
April 25, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares A few Tax Policy Center staffers and I spend tax season volunteering for the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, providing free tax preparation services to low-income filers. You do not need to be a tax expert to volunteer at a VITA site (it’s like an open-book test), but assisting actual people,
States Forecast Weaker Revenue Growth Ahead of Growing Uncertainties
April 19, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Just as state governors and legislators are figuring out how to spend their unexpected budget surpluses, global events could wipe out much of those gains in fiscal year 2023. State revenue growth was strong in fiscal year 2021, despite widespread economic disruptions caused by the global pandemic. But it appears the current fiscal
Why Another Brutal Filing Season for The IRS May Not Help It Get More Funding
April 18, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares The Internal Revenue Service has limped through yet another tax filing season, reduced to plugging staffing holes in customer service and returns processing by shifting workers around—and thus creating new tax administration gaps. Thanks to months-long delays in processing millions of 2020 tax returns, the agency’s most visible vulnerabilities have shifted from enforcement
Are Taxes Complicated? Compared to What?
April 15, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares As the April 18 deadline for filing income tax rapidly approaches, many people will complain about how complicated the process is. But there is a flip side: The income tax provides “one stop” shopping that enables people to receive, in one fell swoop, the benefits of numerous social policies and economic incentives. Including
