Stopping International Tax Avoidance: What Are the Best Alternatives?
Both the WaPo and the NYT have articles today on a topic of great importance for the tax debate in advanced economies. The pieces discuss how officials from the UK and European economies are being pushed by their citizens to go after the type of tax avoidance engaged in by Apple, Google, GE, and countless [...]
Apple on the Hill: What Can be Learned from Yesterday’s Hearing
“…we are deeply committed to our country’s welfare.” Apple CEO Tim Cook at a hearing yesterday focused on the company’s extensive tax avoidance. OK…I’ve got no reason to question that assertion. I suspect Mr. Cook and other execs over there are thoroughly patriotic. But they are also unquestionably “deeply committed” to their bottom line and [...]
Today’s Papers
–The NYT ran one of their “Sunday Dialogues” based off of my full employment op-ed. I thought it was a great selection of provocative letters, all worth a read. Like many people I talk to about this, especially non-economists, most respondents agreed with the proposition that something’s changed, i.e., accelerated, in the impact of labor-saving [...]
A Few Lessons from the IRS Scandal
Just back from a rousing debate on CNBC on the IRS scandal (a tough way to start the day but always a pleasure to mix it up with the the Squawk team and the smart and balanced Tony Fratto). Key points, as I see them: –While the pugilistic Joe Kernen was disappointed to hear it, I stand [...]
Why Should Any Of These Groups Have Tax-Exempt Status?
Nope, I’m not going to defend the IRS, which appears to have acted in ways wholly inconsistent with their mandate for unbiased investigations into, in this case, whether certain political groups should receive tax-exempt status. It is unclear how high up the chain of command these untoward actions went, but this morning’s news suggests it [...]
Don’t Leave Home!
Jeez, you go away for the day to warn North Carolinians about snake oil supply-side tax changes that will gut their revenues while shifting the tax burden onto lower-income households, and some candidate for governor proposes to do the same damn thing in your own state! Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II said Tuesday that if elected [...]
Down the Up Staircase
Spent the day in lovely North Carolina where the legislature is contemplating some very bad tax policy. There’s this scourge across the land where a number of states are cutting their income taxes and raising their sales taxes. Bad idea. [Here’s my slides and talk from today: Slides & Talk] First off, you’re shifting your [...]
Don’t Tax You, Don’t Tax Me…Tax that Guy Behind the Tree!
Everyone says they want to broaden the tax base and lower the rates. Until you get specific…then it’s “that’s no loophole, that’s my vitally important jobs, investment, savings, and growth, program!” That’s certainly the way to understand the pushback to the President’s very good and very modest idea to limit the amount of tax deferred savings [...]
Tax Reform: As Usual, We’re Going About it All Wrong
I really don’t like to be cynical—therein lies the way to dark and gnarled soul—so I apologize in advance for this cynical statement (but keep reading…hope is on the way): whatever DC is debating right now, you can rest assured that it’s mostly BS, and I don’t mean Bowles-Simpson. To state the glaringly obvious, lobbyists [...]
Talkin’ Taxes at Milken Global Conference
Here’s the video from our tax session at the Milken Conference–covered a lot of ground…see what you think.
Tax Day!
And thus an opportune time for a moment of reflection on the spectrum of emotions this day, and this topic, evokes. First though, everyone should do what’s required on them on April 15th. No, I’m not talking solely about getting the check in the mail. I’m talking about the traditional OTE tax day visit to the [...]
Here’s What An Inefficient Tax Break Looks Like
There are a lot of people running around DC these days talking about closing tax loopholes. But when you push them on specifics, most are hard pressed to say which ones. Though I name names in recent testimony on the topic, I’m sympathetic. Your loophole is my treasured job-creation program without which the economy will collapse. [...]
Why Corporate Tax Reform is Hard
Prepping to talk about corporate tax reform on MSNBC at 2′ish, I stumbled on this ‘graf from this WSJ piece. I thought it was a tight summary of a basic fact of reform: Companies with huge capital investments, such as manufacturers, care a lot about the terms of writing them off; companies in labor-intensive business don’t. Companies [...]
Talkin’ Budgets All the Day Long
Spent the day talking about the House and Senate budgets in various settings and I’ll say this: you will be hard pressed to find anyone who takes the Ryan budget seriously. Even Ryan himself seemed to almost distance himself in an interview with Larry Kudlow on CNBC. At one level, that’s good. It’s a very [...]
The Tyranny of the Average
As someone who works with numbers a lot, I find averages to be tremendously helpful. I’d be lost without them.* But there’s one area where averages have been misleadingly used of late, an area where the stakes are extremely high—this is far from academic. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that if we don’t [...]
Today’s Chin Music, Movement #2: Reform Tax Expenditures
Testified at an interesting hearing this morning before the Senate Budget Committee on reducing wasteful spending (of a particular sort) by reforming tax expenditures. Here’s my testimony and here’s a summary post from the CBPP blog. As OTE’ers know, restructuring, reducing, or repealing some of these deductions and credits should entice partisans on both sides [...]
I Just Solved the Sequester!
OK, maybe the title to this post is slightly inflated, but only slightly. A central reason we’re heading into the self-inflicted wound known as sequestration is because R’s refuse to budge on any new revenues in a deficit reduction deal to offset the $85 billion in auto-cuts about to hit our already wobbly economy. The [...]
Taxes All the Day Long
I began the day speaking at a great Tax Notes forum and throughout the day, I’ve stumbled on numerous interesting articles on tax policy, both from high and low analytic altitudes. The forum was to mark (I’d say “celebrate” but not everyone would agree) the 100 year anniversary of the federal income tax (they even [...]
Talking Growth on Squawk
Had great fun guest-hosting on CNBC’s Squawk Box this AM. In one segment, we all whipped around talking about what it would take to move from 2% growth to 4% growth (and we may not even be at 2% right now; probably more like 1.5%). As expected, there were quite divergent views and as even [...]
Talkin’ Revenues and Loopholes
My CBPP colleague Chuck Marr has a nice little post up on where some of the revenues might come from in this next round of fiscal negotiations. …policymakers could reform or eliminate many costly tax breaks as part of a balanced long-term deficit-reduction package — or as part of a balanced short-term package to pay [...]
Thinking About State Taxation
Out here in Oregon, I’ve been diving a bit more deeply into the question of taxation at the state level. In earlier posts, I’ve highlighted the excellent work by CTJ on the regressivity of state taxes, especially in states that rely more on sales versus income taxes. Well, if there’s a regressive idea out there, [...]
Corporate Tax Reform Should be Revenue Positive
We appear to be headed for another nasty tax debate, with Republicans unequivocally asserting that after the fiscal cliff deal, they’re out of the tax increasing business and Dems/WH standing firm that further deficit reduction should be balanced between spending cuts and tax increases. Should balance in fact prevail, as it should, and given that [...]
CAP’s Michael Ettlinger, Live!, on Tax Reform
Suppose we actually do some serious tax reform this year, or next year…or ever. We’ll need a good roadmap to get there and as OTE’ers know, I thought CAP came out with a great tax reform plan a few weeks ago. I was fortunate to interview CAP’s VP for Economic Policy, Michael Ettlinger, who provides [...]
Jared Bernstein’s areas of expertise include federal and state economic and fiscal policies, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, international comparisons, and the analysis of financial and housing markets.
