Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Think Tank Reports
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Tax Foundation: President Obama’s Tax Policy Would Reduce Economic Growth and Incomes
The Tax Foundation released a report yesterday arguing that President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 would slow economic growth and reduce future incomes: The amount of income that would be lost over the next ten years because of higher taxes varies by state, ranging from $2 billion in Vermont…
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Highest (and Lowest) State & Local Tax Burdens
Tax Foundation, Annual State-Local Tax Burden Ranking: For nearly two decades the Tax Foundation has published an estimate of the combined state and local tax burden shouldered by the residents of each of the fifty states. For each state, we compute this measure of tax burden by totaling the amount of state and local taxes…
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CRFB: Repealing Deductions Could Lead to 30% Tax Rate Cut (Not Merely 20% Claimed by Romney)
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: Tax Reform: Reducing Tax Rates and the Deficit: There is a growing bipartisan consensus on the merits of enacting comprehensive tax reform that lowers tax rates and broadens the tax base – as was done in the 1986 tax reforms – while also reducing the deficit. Combining rate reduction…
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Cato: The Misuse of Top 1% Income Shares as a Measure of Inequality
Cato Institute: The Misuse of Top 1 Percent Income Shares as a Measure of Inequality, by Alan Reynolds: This paper confirms recent studies which find little or no sustained increase in the inequality of disposable income for the U.S. population as a whole over the past 20 years, even though estimates of the top 1%’s share…
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2013 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States
The Tax Foundation today released the 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index (10th ed.) which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates: 1 Wyoming 41 Maryland 2 South…
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CBPP: 2-to-1 Spending Cut/Tax Increase Ratio in Simpson-Bowles Is Now 0.5-to-1
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: What Was Actually in Bowles-Simpson — And How Can We Compare it With Other Plans?: Many policymakers have said that they “support,” “endorse,” or otherwise look favorably on “Bowles-Simpson” — the budget plan that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson issued in December 2010 as co-chairs of President Obama’s National Commission…
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Tax Foundation: Romney Plan Would Cut Middle Class Taxes (Using 1% Dynamic Scoring Model)
Tax Foundation: Would the Romney Tax Plan Necessarily Reduce After-Tax Incomes for the Middle Class?: In August, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC) released a report [updated here] claiming to show that Mitt Romney's tax reform plan would necessarily raise taxes on middle-class taxpayers and reduce their after-tax incomes, while giving a significant tax cut…
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Urban Institute Hosts Program Today on Taxes and the Fiscal Cliff
The Urban Institute hosts a lunchtime program today on Danger Ahead? Taxes and the Fiscal Cliff (webcast here): As 2012 becomes 2013, more than confetti will be up in the air. Along with it will be the expiring tax cuts of 2001, 2003, and 2010, the end of the 2011 payroll tax cut, new taxes…
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CRFB Releases Corporate Tax Reform Report and Calculator
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has released a policy paper on corporate tax reform (Reforming the Corporate Tax Code) along with an interactive Corporate Tax Reform Calculator that allows users to design their own corporate tax reform plan. The policy paper argues that with the highest statutory corporate tax rates in the developed…
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TPC: Five Myths About the 47 Percent
Tax Policy Center: Five Myths About the 47 Percent: As Mitt Romney recently noted, about 47% of U.S. households do not pay federal income taxes. Some see this as evidence of a welfare state run amok. Others think that gimmicks and loopholes let both rich and poor Americans duck their taxes. This commentary corrects some…
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Heritage Foundation: The Tax Policy Center’s Skewed Analysis of Romney’s Tax Plan
Heritage Foundation: Tax Policy Center’s Skewed Analysis of Governor Romney's Tax Plan: The Tax Policy Center recently released a report that erroneously concludes that Governor Mitt Romney’s tax reform plan would necessarily cut taxes for the rich and raise them for middle-income and low-income taxpayers. However, despite the authors’ claims, their analysis is far from definitive.…
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Tax Foundation: Putting a Face on America’s Tax Returns — A Chart Book
Tax Foundation, Putting a Face on America’s Tax Returns: A Chart Book: Inequality has been at the forefront of the nation’s political discourse recently thanks to a number of published reports purporting to show the rich getting richer while the rest of America is stuck in neutral. Indeed, one report suggests that Americans have not…
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2012 Corporate Tax Competitiveness Rankings
Cato Institute: Corporate Tax Competitiveness Rankings for 2012, by Duanjie Chen & Jack Mintz (both of University of Calgary, School of Public Policy): Corporate income tax reform is receiving serious consideration in Washington. The Obama administration has suggested reducing the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% while broadening the tax base. Presidential candidate…
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Why Progressives Should Want to End the Estate Tax, Too
Huffington Post: Why Progressives Should Want to End the Estate Tax, Too, by Scott Drenkard (Tax Foundation): [T]here is a large and growing body of research by economists that generally lean left-of-center pointing toward repeal of the estate tax…. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, who served as chairman on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, authored…
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CTJ: Democrats’ Tax Plan Is Too Republican
Citizens for Tax Justice: Tax Ideas in the Democratic Platform: Obama as Tax-Cutter-In-Chief: In its 2012 Platform, the Democratic Party broadly calls for a tax system that asks “the wealthiest and corporations to pay their fair share,” while also taking “decisive steps to restore fiscal responsibility.” The actual policy proposals called for in the platform,…
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Tax Foundation: Romney’s Tax Plan Is Far Closer to Simpson-Bowles Than Obama’s Tax Plan
Tax Foundation: Romney, Obama, & Simpson-Bowles: How Do the Tax Reform Plans Stack Up?: Among the tax reform plans of the major presidential candidates, Mitt Romney’s proposal to lower rates and eliminate credits and deductions comes far closer than that of President Obama to the widely-praised and bipartisan framework of the Simpson-Bowles tax reform commission.…
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Heritage: Clinton Tax Hikes Slowed Growth of Economy, Wages
Heritage Foundation: Clinton Tax Hikes Slowed Growth, by Curtis S. Dubay: President Obama argues that President Clinton’s economic record is proof that the current economy would grow if Congress passed the tax hikes he has long proposed. The American public should not fall for this misleading argument. The historical record is clear: The economy grew…
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Tax Foundation: The Estate Tax Is Even Worse Than Republicans Say
Tax Foundation, The Estate Tax: Even Worse Than Republicans Say: A recent study issued by the Republican staff of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee detailed many of the failings of the estate tax, calling for either a significant reform or outright repeal of the estate tax. The report, which referenced four separate Tax Foundation studies and…
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Pew: 58% Say the Rich Should Pay More Taxes
Pew Research Center: Yes, the Rich Are Different: Another widely held perception of the rich is that they do not pay their fair share in taxes. A majority of adults (58%) say that upper-income people pay too little in federal taxes. One-in-four (26%) say upper-income people pay their fair share in taxes, and 8% say…
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The Impact of Tax Rates on Economic Productivity and Fairness
Manhattan Institute: The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays?, by Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal): “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates…. [A]n economy constrained by…
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Goolsbee: Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan and the Middle Class
Wall Street Journal op-ed: Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan and the Middle Class, by Austan Goolsbee (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business): Researchers for the Tax Policy Center, a project of Brookings and the Urban Institute, found that Romney’s plan would cut taxes for individuals by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years, on…
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Sixteen States Have Marriage Penalties
Tax Foundation: Does Your State Have a Marriage Penalty?: In a progressive tax system, higher incomes are taxed at higher rates, and in states where the same tax brackets apply to both single and married filers, the effective tax rate on the combined income of two earners can be significantly more than if the two…
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Six Policies Economists Love (And Politicians Hate)
NPR, Six Policies Economists Love (And Politicians Hate): Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction. … End the tax deduction companies get for providing health-care to employees. … Eliminate the corporate income tax. … Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax…