All Tax VOX

State governments face at least a $1 trillion gap between pensions promised to their employees and retirees and the funds set aside to cover these liabilities. There are ways out of the pension pickle, but none of them are easy. 

According to official budget rules, taxpayers will earn more than $200 billion over the next decade from new student loans, mortgage guarantees, and the Export-Import Bank. According to an alternative that CBO favors, taxpayers will lose more than $100 billion.

The Treasury's new rules won't stop the wave of corporate tax inversions – Treasury Secretary Jack Lew acknowledged as much when the agency proposed the curbs yesterday. Will they slow the practice? Perhaps, but even that is not certain.

The Treasury Department is moving to close loopholes that allow US companies, like Burger King, to move corporate headquarters overseas for a lower tax bill. But the debate continues over whether Treasury even has the power to limit the practice.

Standard and Poor's got a lot of attention last week for a study that concluded that rising income inequality is damaging state tax revenues. State tax revenue growth has slowed in recent decades and income inequality has grown, but the story is far more complicated than S&P suggests. 

Policy makers and researchers have long been interested in how potential changes to the personal income tax system affect the size of the overall economy. A new paper examines the possibilities. 

The NFL's tax-exempt status is not high on the Congressional to-do list, but that's not keeping some senators, including New Jersey's Cory Booker, from trying to repeal it over the NFL's response to domestic violence charges against its players.

Michigan lawmakers were fired up following an unfavorable state Supreme Court decision in a lawsuit brought by IBM. With astounding speed and overwhelming bipartisan support the legislature swooped in and passed a law blocking an unexpected $1 billion in corporate tax refunds. 

The argument to repeal the corporate income tax has gained a lot of steam. But what would replace it? 

Recent projections from the Congressional Budget have contained nuggets of seemingly good news: including falling debt and Medicare costs. But there are a few key facts that might give one pause in claiming 'victory' in the deficit wars.

 After Burger King announced its plans to buy Canada’s Tim Hortons and move north, Ohio’s Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown has called for his constituents to eat at Ohio-based burger chains instead. If Burger King’s plan succeeds, it would become the world’s third-largest fast food company. 

The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office expect the federal deficit to shrink, but the more interesting story is what is expected to happen to federal spending under current law.

All the fracas over tax inversions like the recent Burger King-Tim Horton's merger has generated some interesting ideas for broader changes in the way we tax multinational firms. One would base a firm’s US taxable profits on the US share of its total worldwide sales.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is considering regulatory curbs on corporate tax inversions as a growing number of US companies, like Pfizer and potentially Burger King, take them on as a way to lower their tax bills. 

Reducing tax rates is a guiding principal of most tax reform plans. But how much does Treasury lose when Congress reduces individual tax rates, and which taxpayers benefit the most from the cuts?

Corporate inversions are all the rage these days. They yield tax benefits and may boost after-tax profits, but they can also leave shareholders with unwanted capital gains and big tax bills. 

Tax-free holidays are celebrated by politicians and retailers, but economists and policy analysts across the ideological spectrum condemn them as poorly targeted tax policy that produces little economic benefit. Is there any real fiscal benefit to tax-free holidays? 

After a US corporation inverts, a foreign company owns it (rather than it owning the foreign company). The US corporation is still subject to US taxes, but it can reduce its tax liability. How President Obama can discourage such behavior. 

For all the hand-wringing about the budget deficit, Congress passed two important bills last week, but with no idea how to pay for either of them. The deficit is an issue lawmakers care deeply about, except when they don’t.

Political gridlock in Congress, plus a weakened IRS, has led to more tax avoidance, writes Eric Toder. How is that true, and what can be done to stop it?