Category: Taxes

Like everyone else in policy circles, I think the tax code as it is currently constructed is a complicated joke. There is a lot that can be said for how to fix it, some of which I don’t know enough to comment about. One thing I do know enough to comment about is how to… Continue reading Low Hanging Tax Code Simplification

New post at policy shop. Excerpt: It is this kind of complexity that renders most siloed discussions of the value of the corporate income tax somewhat ridiculous. Talking about the value of any particular tax in a vacuum almost always generates this kind of borderline futile discussion. What ultimately matters is not the merit of… Continue reading Policy Shop: Corporate Income Tax Arguments Almost Always Miss the Point

The OECD released some information about income taxes for 2011. It’s hard to know how interesting the information is because all the spreadsheet links in the release are broken. Nonetheless, the release provides this chart, which compares income taxes in the United States to income taxes in the rest of the 34-country OECD: These numbers… Continue reading United States income taxes still relatively low

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities put out a nice series of charts today detailing the distributional impact of various regressive taxes in the United States. One of the findings is that the lowest quintile of households pay 1.6% of their income in excise taxes each year while the top 1% pay only 0.1%… Continue reading The poor pay 16x higher excise tax rate than the rich

The Center for Tax Justice released a report yesterday detailing the 2011 tax burdens of different income groups in the United States. Contrary to common wisdom, the poor are not free-riding on taxes and the rich are not drowning in them. As the CTJ notes (and as I have noted before), certain taxes are progressive… Continue reading The fairly flat tax burden in 2011