Time to justify your favored tax breaks - if you can

On June 27, 2013, Senator Baucus, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and Senator Hatch, Ranking Member of the committee issued a call to ...

GAO video on tax expenditures

The GAO issued a few reports this year on tax expenditures. I just watched their 4 1/2 minute video released May 30, 2013 on one of the repo...

Distribution of individual tax expenditures

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a report - The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax S...

Budget and tax system spending

In looking for budget cuts, lawmakers have to look at all of the deductions, exclusions and tax credits in the tax system. As Mr. Simpson an...

H.R. 1 - Tax Reform in the 113th Congress

House Majority Leader John Boehner has announced that H.R. 1 is being reserved for tax reform legislation (see 2/26/13 Ways & Means webs...

Groups Raise "Corporate Welfare" Argument in California

This month, the Reason Foundation and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation released a 59-page report - Tax Credits in California - Economic Gr...

Cutting back the state tax deduction

As lawmakers look at how to pay for keeping any of the lower tax rates that were temporarily set in place back in 2001 and 2003, they are lo...

NYT questions value of mortgage interest deduction

The New York Times ran an article on 10/25/12 - " Who Really Benefits From Interest Deductions " by Lisa Prevost. It points out a...

Will Obama and Romney list the tax subsidies they will cut for lowered rates?

The calls for lower tax rates come along with vague calls for cutting tax expenditures or base broadening. I say vague because we rarely hea...

Examining corporate tax expenditures

Alex Engler, Executive Online Editor of Georgetown's Public Policy Review and a Master's of Public Policy student, recently shared w...

Hearing on expiring tax provisions

On June 8, a House Ways and Means subcommittee held a hearing on Framework for Evaluating Certain Expiring Tax Provisions . I think that is ...

Tax expenditure reform and income groups

The Hamilton Project has a nice chart showing the use of various tax expenditures (favorable tax rules) for different income groups. It is ...

Overlooked Tax Deductions

I received an email from Turbo Tax about one of their several "tax tip" " infographics" they provide. This one is called...

Increased focus on tax expenditures

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on March 24, 2012 - "Tax Breaks Exceed $1 Trillion: Report" by McKinnon. I think it is gr...

Income inequality, education and taxation

A recent blog post from The Tax Foundation (3/16/12) points out - "Census Data Shows Inequality Linked to Education, Not Taxes."  ...

Republican Budget Plan and Tax Reform Mystery

http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf  The House Budget Committee released the Republican Budget plan this week....

Cleaning up the tax mess - PBS show

On March 9, 2012, PBS had four commentators, including Bruce Bartlett, address the issue - "Cleaning up the tax mess."  It is post...