129tn0933.pdf (application/pdf Object). (courtesy of Paul Caron's taxprof.typepad.com blog)
I commend the whole article to your attention (it runs 3 pages). But I'll focus on a few paragraphs which particularly intrigue me. DCJ begins,
Republican congressional leaders have said they will let all of the Bush tax cuts expire unless the president bows to their demand that the top 3 percent of Americans be included in any tax cut extension.
Obama should call their bluff.
I don’t think the Republicans are so stupid that they would let all the Bush tax cuts expire if they cannot continue tax cuts for billionaires and the affluent on all of their income. But let’s assume that the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are that dumb, or so beholden to the antitax billionaires funding their campaigns, that they would force universal tax increases.
skipping ahead,
More important than any political gain, however, is what calling the GOP bluff could do to get our nation back on the path to prosperity and to stop policies that are pushing us into economic disaster, thanks in huge part to the Bush administration’s combination of revenue-losing tax cuts, wars, and wild spending.
By calling the Republicans’ bluff, Obama can get us talking about taxes and the future of America, instead of protecting what the richest among us already have.
The president could speak about Wall Street handing out record bonuses this year — an estimated $144 billion to a relative handful of people, many of whom get richer by destroying wealth, including assets of state and local government pension funds whose losses we have to make up for with more taxes.
Those bonuses, by the way, are about 2.4 times expected Wall Street profits.
How about a presidential lecture on entitlements focused on Lloyd Blankfein, whose firm’s bad bets taxpayers paid off at 100 cents on the dollar? The Goldman Sachs boss whines about making only $9 million last year because of his ‘‘sacrifice’’ and plans an extra-big payday this December to make up for last year.
The president could change the terms of our economic debate by talking about how much the vast majority props up many of those at the very top, starting with Blankfein. He could tell people about the trillion dollars a year of tax favors for corporations and the rich, as documented by the Shelf Project. (For the article, see Tax Notes, July 5, 2010, p. 101, Doc 2010-13081, or 2010 TNT 129-4.) Obama should explain how soak-the-middle-class and sink-the-poor policies damage economic growth.
Obama could also talk about how America has stopped being number one in many other categories because of tax policies that are hollowing out our nation’s economy and destroying the commonwealth on which private wealth building relies.
I am an admirer of DCJ, appreciate his two books, and look forward to his third -- but I don't think he yet sees the half of it! (And need I say that none of our current parties do either?)
Skipping ahead again:
The president could explain that the tax system helps Peterson’s billions float on a sea of tax credits, tax breaks, and tax deferrals. Obama could read to people from 1950s newspaper stories about old ladies eating cat food. The president could stop in at food banks where families who worked hard and played by the rules were crushed by the machinations of Wall Streeters.
He could talk about how a single working person making the median wage of just over $26,000 paid nearly a third larger share of her income in federal taxes than the top 400 taxpayers, who each made almost $1 million a day in 2007.
And Obama could tell taxpayers about all those people with billion-dollar annual incomes who legally pay no current income taxes, while the rest of us get dinged before we get paid. Let me play speechwriter for Obama on this one:
Hedge fund managers make billions of dollars each year, but they get to delay paying their taxes for years or even decades — and then pay taxes at less than half the rate that other highly paid people must pay.
Do these hedge fund managers build factories?
Do they create software or new technologies?
Do they create the jobs America needs?
No! They are speculators, speculating with borrowed money.
The Republicans want to cut your Medicare and cut your Social Security.
Now if that’s what you want, then I urge you to support the Republicans. But if you think the highest-paid workers in the history of the world — people who can and often do make a billion dollars in a year — should pay taxes, pay their taxes in full, and pay them now, then you need to show your support for my policies.
If you want your tax cuts back, you need to stand with me. You need to petition, to demonstrate, to call and write to your representative and senators, telling them this kind of favoritism has got to stop and stop right now.
I'm glad to see that DCJ is calling attention to this particular form of speculation -- skimming the cream off the economy without producing anything.
Recall that Joseph Stiglitz made remarks to this effect, speaking in July at the University of Queensland in Australia:
"Finance is a means to an end," he said. "The lack of balance between the financial sector and the economic sector was actually the real problem in this economic crisis (NOT the real estate bubble)."
I've not heard of Stiglitz saying this where the American media might catch on, but appreciate his willingness to state it elsewhere.
How do we encourage the sorts of business activity which create jobs, create housing which is welcoming and affordable for people at all points on the income and wealth spectra? By getting our incentives right, and by straightening out what we tax, what we don't, and the rates at which we tax each.
A 2007 OECD study compared some of the commonly-used tax bases for their effects on economic growth, and concludes that the personal income tax is an inferior tax. What does it endorse? Interestingly, the conventional property tax! Those who read this blog regularly know that the conventional property tax is an unfortunate marriage of two taxes with very different effects -- one quite desirable, and the other largely negative in its effects.
Elsewhere, I came across this table:
| Distributional Effects of Allowing All Expiring Tax Provisions to Expire, 2011 |
||
| Increase in Federal Taxes | ||
| Income Category | Millions of Dollars | Percent |
| Less than $10,000 | 117 | 1.0 |
| $10,000 - $20,000 | 3,721 | 19.9 |
| $20,000 - $30,000 | 11,654 | 20.8 |
| $30,000 - $40,000 | 12,869 | 14.1 |
| $40,000 - $50,000 | 11,238 | 10.6 |
| $50,000 - $75,000 | 26,705 | 9.2 |
| $75,000 - $100,000 | 28,517 | 9.8 |
| $100,000 - $200,000 | 62,309 | 10.6 |
| $200,000 - $500,000 | 26,871 | 8.7 |
| $500,000 - $1 million | 10,620 | 8.3 |
| $1 million and over | 32,708 | 11.0 |
| Total, all taxpayers | 227,330 | 10.4 |
|
Source: Joint Committee on Taxation (July 30, 2010 |
||
If I am reading the table correctly, it says that while the folks in the $1 million plus income category would experience an 11.0% increase in their federal taxes, those in the $10,000 to $20,000 range would see a 19.9% increase, and those in the $20,000 to $30,000 range would have a 20.8% increase in their federal taxes. Admittedly, these are small numbers -- I assume that they exclude social security and medicare payroll taxes, which are much higher than federal income taxes for perhaps 75% of us. But does it make sense to increase income taxes on those whose incomes are sufficiently low that they likely spend virtually 100% of what comes in by twice as much as the income taxes on those who have plenty of discretionary income?
We need better taxes. Search this page for the OECD study, or search for "canons of taxation" on the wealthandwant.com website. Smart taxes are smart. Dumb taxes are dumb.
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