All Tax VOX

The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can require people to either have health insurance or pay a tax if they don’t. The political fate of the Affordable Care Act remains to be seen, of course, but at least we know it is constitutional. 

Suddenly, the tough budget reform proposed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles is getting a second look. Oh, politicians don’t love the real plan, but they are positively enamored of their own self-edited, stripped-down versions.

The idea of the X Tax–a progressive consumption tax designed 25 years ago–generated lots of discussion among tax experts. Whatever you want to label it, there are so few new ideas in tax policy, it never hurts to revisit an old one.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says he wants to cut tax rates, and he wants high-income households to pay the same share of taxes they do today. This first promise is easy to understand. But the second is far more subtle.

Many Americans may believe that Medicare is financed like Social Security. They know that a portion of payroll taxes goes to Social Security and a portion goes to Medicare, and they conclude workers are paying for Medicare benefits. This is not true.

While optimists may hang on to the small morsels of agreement between Senator Baucus and Representative Camp's tax reform proposals, in general the dueling plans are opposites, making bipartisan cooperation on the issue seem unlikely.

Over the past week, Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Glenn Hubbard have all made the same suggestion: Congress should extend all of the 2001/2003 tax cuts into early next year. It seems like an awful idea.

There is nothing inevitable about the glum estimate set forth in the Congressional Budget Office's latest fiscal policy snapshot. What if Congress retained the level of taxation set by current law, while collecting the money in a much smarter way?

As a matter of pure tax policy, our tax analyst analyzes the different option on the table. Ideally, Congress should build the best possible tax base and then adjust the rates to meet an agreed-upon revenue target. But in a partisan Congress, few things are 'ideal.'

As a behind-the-scenes debate begins among reformers over just how to fix the US tax code, some Republicans insist that big, broad-based reform would be easier to accomplish, while others in Congress advocate for a more step-by-step process.

State taxes and transfers can be an important, albeit complicated form of assistance for low-income families. A new interactive calculator aims to help guide families through the process, including the options when family income increases.

What if hitting the statutory debt limit does not happen until sometime in the first quarter of 2013? That is increasingly likely, say the folks who watch this sort of thing. And it would completely change the politics of the coming train wreck.

Tax reform will be difficult, but with a four-step road map, it can be done.

Like a movie franchise that keeps coming back, California's annual budget mess is the same story year after year.

Ever since the U.S. financial crash of 2008 and the beginnings of the pending Euro-zone financial collapse, governments have been debating whether securities transactions should be subject to a new tax. Such a levy would discourage bad behavior in the financial markets, but it could have dire unintended consequences.

Will Obama's public support of marriage equality spill over to financial matters?

It's easy to look at European elections in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Denmark and see a massive rejection of fiscal austerity. Is that accurate, and what does it mean for proponents of austerity in the US?

If you think the Bush tax cuts should be extended—an idea most opponents of the millionaire tax support—revenues from a minimum tax rate on millionaires would increase by a much more significant $162 billion over the decade. And that’s hardly the chump change than the Buffett rule's critics imply.

Two economists, a tax historian, and a philosopher debated what a 'fair' tax code means at an Urban Institute panel this week.