Many economists and policy-makers believe that the U.S. corporate tax system is in need of reform. There is, however, disagreement over why the corporate tax system needs to be reformed, and what specific policy measures should be included in a reform. To assist policy-makers in designing and evaluating corporate tax proposals, this book reviews the current U.S. corporate tax system; discusses economic factors that may be considered in the corporate tax reform debate; and presents corporate tax reform policy options, including a brief discussion of current corporate tax reform proposals. The current U.S. corporate income tax system generally taxes corporate income at a rate of 35%. This tax is applied to income earned domestically and abroad, although taxes on certain income earned abroad can be deferred indefinitely if that income remains overseas. The U.S. corporate tax system also contains a number of deductions, exemptions, deferrals, and tax credits, often referred to as "tax expenditures". Collectively, these provisions reduce the effective tax rate paid by many U.S. corporations below the 35% statutory rate. In 2011, the sum of all corporate tax expenditures was $158.8 billion.

On 31 December 2012, a variety of temporary tax provisions that were part of the "fiscal cliff" expired. Two days later, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) retroactively extended, and in certain cases modified, many of these provisions. The short period between the expiration of these provisions and the enactment on January 2 of ATRA retroactively meant that from the perspective of all but upper-income taxpayers, income taxes remained unchanged between 2012 and 2013. This book provides an overview of the tax provisions included in the "fiscal cliff deal", including: the permanent extension and modification of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts ("Bush-era tax cuts"); the temporary extension of certain tax provisions originally included as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA); the permanent extension of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch; the temporary extension of a variety of other temporary expiring provisions for individuals, businesses, and energy often referred to as "tax extenders"; and the expansion of in-plan conversions of traditional employer-sponsored retirement accounts (like 401(k) plans) to employer-sponsored Roth Accounts.

In the face of the rising cost of higher education, families may consider a variety of ways to finance their children's college expenses. In order to make higher education more affordable, Congress enacted legislation that provides favourable tax treatment for college savings. Among the options families may choose to save for college, they may consider using tax-advantaged qualified tuition programs (QTPs), also known as 529 plans. This book provides an overview of the mechanics of 529 plans and examines the specific tax advantages that these plans offer.

This book examines a key element of current federal support for manufacturing: tax benefits. More specifically, it identifies and describes current federal tax preferences that offer significant benefits for small and large manufacturing firms. Additionally, technological innovation is a major driving force in long-term economic growth, and research and development (R&D) serves as the lifeblood of innovation. The federal government encourages business R&D in a variety of ways, including a tax credit for a company's increases in spending on qualified research above a base amount. The current status of the tax credit is described, as is its legislative history, the policy issues it raises and legislation in the 112th Congress to modify or extend it.

Income tax rates have been at the centre of recent policy debates over taxes. Some policy-makers have argued that raising tax rates, especially on higher income taxpayers, to increase tax revenues is part of the solution for long-term debt reduction. For example, the Senate recently passed the Middle Class Tax Cut, which would allow the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts to expire for taxpayers with income over $250,000. The Senate recently considered legislation, the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, that would implement the "Buffett rule" by raising the tax rate on millionaires. Other recent budget and deficit reduction proposals would reduce tax rates. This book examines individual income tax rates since 1945 in relation to these arguments and seeks to establish what, if any, relationship exists between the top tax rates and economic growth, using statistical analysis.

The President and leading Members of Congress have stated that fundamental tax reform is a major policy objective for the 112th Congress. Some Members have said that fundamental tax reform is needed in order to raise a large amount of additional revenue, which is necessary to reduce high forecast budget deficits and the sharply rising national debt. Congressional interest has been expressed in both a major overhaul of the U.S. tax system and the feasibility of levying a consumption tax. Some proponents of reform argue that the tax base should be broadened by reducing or eliminating many tax expenditures. An alternative to increasing tax revenues is cutting spending. Thus, Members are faced with considering the best mix of tax increases and spending cuts in order to reduce deficits and slow the growth of the national debt. This book examines major fiscal reform proposals for tax reform with a focus on business tax reform and the extension of the "Bust Tax Cuts".

The federal government spends roughly $1 trillion on health care programs each year, so it is easy to imagine that policies that promote a healthier population could have a significant impact on the federal budget. Such policies might include initiatives that discourage smoking or excessive alcohol consumption, that promote better eating habits and physical activity to reduce obesity, or that encourage compliance with medical and dietary regimens for chronic conditions such as diabetes. In this book, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyses a policy involving smoking, a hypothetical increase of 50 cents per pack in the federal excise tax on cigarettes and small cigars, to demonstrate the complex links between policies that aim to improve health and effects on the federal budget. The emphasis is on estimating the budgetary effects that would result from improvements in the health of the population stemming from the policy.

Essential tax information for the small business owner in every industry that will bring their tax liability to its knees.
Written in language that everyone can understand, this well-rounded guide offers essential business basics and tax information that all small business owners need to know to set up, maintain and grow a successful business.
Some of the hot topics discussed are:
Office & file organization Record, file and tax return recovery W-2, 1099-Misc and the new 1099-K Business expenses Incorporation, Partnership and LLC basics Health and retirement benefits for the self-employed Talking to the IRS and responding to notices What to expect in an audit
In an honest and frank discussion about sex work, business and taxes, Tax Domme also addresses those issues specific to people working in the Adult Industry such as:
How any type of sex worker can prepare and file their tax return legally Handling income from various sex work properly Deductions specific to the different types of sex work demystified
This guide was inspired by questions from business owners, client tax issues encountered and discussions with colleagues and the IRS.

Durch die Schaffung gemeinsamer Wirtschaftsraume kommt es sowohl auf unternehmerischer als auch auf persoenlicher Ebene zu internationalen wirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen. Vermoegen wird in verschiedenen Formen in unterschiedlichen Landern investiert, Wohnsitze und Ansassigkeiten werden verlagert. Es kommt zu grenzuberschreitenden Vermoegensbesitzverhaltnissen. Dadurch entstehen in mehreren Landern gleichzeitig steuerliche Anknupfungsmerkmale, die eine Erbschaft- bzw. Schenkungsteuer ausloesen koennen. Nationale deutsche Regelungen reichen in der Regel nicht aus, um eine drohende Doppelbesteuerung ganzlich aufzuheben. Anders als im Bereich der Ertragsteuern ist das Netz der Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen im Bereich der Erbschaft- bzw. Schenkungsteuern in Deutschland und international nicht stark ausgepragt. Dadurch gibt es selbst innerhalb der EU ein hohes Mass an Doppelbesteuerungsrisiken. Die Relevanz und steuerliche Brisanz dieser Thematik werden oft erst erkannt, wenn tatsachlich eine Doppelbesteuerung eintritt. Die Untersuchung zeigt auf, auf welcher Ebene von der Entstehung der Steuer bis zur Ermittlung der finalen Steuerschuld angesetzt werden kann, um im Verhaltnis von Deutschland zu Frankreich, zu Grossbritannien und zu den Niederlanden das Risiko der Doppelbesteuerung zu minimieren.

This book looks at the way we tax the poor in the United States, particularly in the American South, where poor families are often subject to income taxes, and where regressive sales taxes apply even to food for home consumption. Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O'Brien argue that these policies contribute in unrecognized ways to poverty-related problems like obesity, early mortality, the high school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime. They show how, decades before California's passage of Proposition 13, many southern states implemented legislation that makes it almost impossible to raise property or corporate taxes, a pattern now growing in the western states. "Taxing the Poor" demonstrates how sales taxes intended to replace the missing revenue - taxes that at first glance appear fair - actually punish the poor and exacerbate the very conditions that drove them into poverty in the first place.

Taxing America provides the first historical study of Wilbur Daigh Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1958 to 1974. The work of Mills, an extremely influential politician between 1945 and 1975, offers considerable insights into the evolution of income taxation, Social Security and Medicare--three policies at the center of today's political debates. Unlike the existing historical scholarship, Zelizer's book focuses on the role of Congress, rather than the executive branch, in the evolution of the welfare state during this seminal period.

Concern has increased over the size and sustainability of the United States' recent budget deficits and the country's long-run budget outlook. This concern has brought the issues of the government's revenue needs and fundamental tax reform to the forefront of congressional debates. Congress may choose to address these issues by reforming the set of tax benefits for homeowners. Reducing, modifying, or eliminating all or some of the current tax benefits for homeowners could raise a substantial amount of revenue, while simultaneously simplifying the tax code, increasing equity among taxpayers, and promoting economic efficiency. This book focuses on the mortgage interest deduction, the deduction for state and local property taxes and the residential energy tax credit.

This volume summarizes the substantial literature on consumption tax policy and the taxation of capital, presents the main theoretical and empirical results of the technical literature on taxation, and extends that literature in a variety of directions with new results. Chapters are self-contained as far as possible, and each uses a variety of models rather than just one to study the issue at hand.

Why were Federalists at the 1787 Philadelphia convention--ostensibly called to revise the Articles of Confederation--so intent on scrapping the old system and drawing up a completely new frame of government?

In "Redeeming the Republic," Roger Brown focuses on state public-policy issues to show how recurrent outbreaks of popular resistance to tax crackdowns forced state governments to retreat from taxation, propelling elites into support for the constitutional revolution of 1787. The Constitution, Brown contends, resulted from upper-class dismay over the state governments' inability to tax effectively for state and federal purposes. The Framers concluded that, without a rebuilt, energized central government, the confederation would experience continued monetary and fiscal turmoil until republicanism itself became endangered.

A fresh and searching study of the hard questions that divided Americans in these critical years and still do today, "Redeeming the Republic" shows how local failures led to federalist resolve and ultimately to a totally new frame of central government.

This volume collects articles from the Symposium series of the National Tax Journal from 1993 to 1998. Leading economists and other scholars discuss and debate current tax policy issues in nontechnical language and illustrate how the principles of tax analysis can be applied to real-world issues. Among the topics addressed are the practical feasibility of consumption tax alternatives to the current income tax, the rationale and implications of devolution of fiscal responsibilities to state and local governments, the effect of tax policy on economic growth, and the value of local tax incentives designed to attract and retain business.

All legally enforceable rights cost money. A practical, commonsense notion? Yes, but one ignored by almost everyone, from libertarian ideologues to Supreme Court justices to human rights advocates. The simple insight that rights are expensive reminds us that freedom is not violated by a government that taxes and spends, but requires it - and requires a citizenry vigilant about how money is allocated. Laying bare the folly of some of our most cherished myths about rights, this groundbreaking tract will permanently change the terms of our most critical and contentious political debates.

The United States tax system includes a tax on assets held at death, the estate tax and the gift tax. Among key components of the estate and gift tax are the definition of its taxable base, tax rate and exemption level. A related argument is that the tax reduces the concentration of wealth and its perceived adverse consequences for society. Critics of the estate and gift tax make two major arguments: the estate and gift tax discourages savings and investments, and the tax imposes an undue burden on closely held family businesses. Critics also suggest that the estate and gift tax is flawed as a method of introducing progressivity because there are many methods of avoiding the tax, methods that are more available to very wealthy families. This book provides an explanation of how the tax operates, analyses the arguments for and against the tax and discusses alternative policy options.

This work examines tax policies and tax systems as they arise from democratic choices, set against the background of a market economy. Professors Hettich and Winer find that democratic institutions yield complex tax systems with features that follow a varied but predictable pattern. In developing their analysis, the authors use formal modelling of voting behavior, emphasizing recent advances in the theory of probabilistic voting. This book differs from the available tax literature by relating fiscal choices directly to voting and by examining tax systems in democratic countries from a variety of perspectives. While the authors primarily focus on explaining observed features of tax systems, they also devote considerable space to the discussion of the welfare and efficiency effects of taxation in the presence of collective choice, and to a review of other models and of the related literature. In addition, they use computational general equilibrium analysis and statistical research on national and state governments in the US and Canada to link theory to empirical data.

The President and leading members of Congress have stated that fundamental tax reform is a major policy objective for the 112th Congress. These policymakers have said that fundamental tax reform is needed in order to raise a large amount of additional revenue, which is necessary to reduce high forecast budget deficits and the sharply rising national debt. Congressional interest has been expressed in both a major overhaul of the U.S. tax system and the feasibility of levying a consumption tax. This book examines the federal tax structure, provides some statistics on the tax system as a whole, tax reform, and presents analysis of selected tax concepts.

In this timely and urgent book, Rohatyn re-creates some of the most dramatic events in our history to show how strong and imaginative political leadership built America and demonstrates that such leadership is essential today to reverse the catastrophic degeneration of America's infrastructure, bridges, tunnels, roads and rails, flood levees and gates. Readers of David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose will revel in his narrative. Although the private sector has been the mainstay of America's economy, Felix Rohatyn argues the country could not have grown into its full destiny without the vision and determination of political leaders who imagined the future and acted to achieve it.

He begins with the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson in 1805, which doubled the size of the country, and the construction of the Erie Canal in 1817-1825, which opened a water route to the West. The chartering of the Trans-Continental railroad, the Land Grant Colleges, and the Homestead Act in 1863, led by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, together opened the continent. The Panama Canal, which joined the east and West coasts by sea, was driven by Theodore Roosevelt. FDR's Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Eisenhower's Interstate Highway program modernized America, and the GI Bill of rights, which came after World War II, remains the greatest investment in intellectual capital and housing in our history.

Rohatyn describes these enterprises as examples of the imagination and decisive leadership that the country is in desperate need of, and, in a final chapter, he predicts the multiple benefits of similarly bold undertakings to secure our nation's future and offers a blueprint for setting priorities and financing them.

This book surveys recent developments in public economics by taking as a case-study the proposals for a basic income/flat tax scheme. It discusses various approaches to taxation and presents a framework for a system that would affect both personal income and the social security system, replacing the one by a flat-rate income tax and the other by a guaranteed income. This idea has generated wide interest in a number of countries, and is being actively discussed by several political parties. This book explains how these changes would benefit a wide variety of social groups, leading to a greater redistribution of income. At the same time, it also raises the question of whether a single reform can meet the very different objectives of different supporters. The author reviews different areas of public economics in which there has been active research in recent years- namely the theory of optimum taxation, public choice theory, general equilibrium analysis of incidence, numerical tax- benefit modelling, and econometric studies of work incentives-and asks how these contribute to our understanding of this particular policy reform. He also indicates the promising directions for future research. The author does not argue for or against the basic income/flat tax proposal, but believes it should be on the agenda for any serious discussion of tax and social security reform for the twenty-first century.

This book assembles nine papers on tax progressivity and its relationship to income inequality, written by leading public finance economists. The papers document the changes during the 1980s in progressivity at the federal, state, and local level in the US. One chapter investigates the extent to which the declining progressivity contributed to the well-documented increase in income inequality over the past two decades, while others investigate the economic impact and cost of progressive tax systems. Special attention is given to the behavioral response to taxation of high-income individuals, portfolio behavior, and the taxation of capital gains. The concluding set of essays addresses the contentious issue of what constitutes a 'fair' tax system, contrasting public attitudes towards alternative tax systems to economists' notions of fairness. Each essay is followed by remarks of a commentator plus a summary of the discussion among contributors.

In his 1972 Janeway Lectures at Princeton, James Tobin, the 1981 Nobel Prize winner for economics, submitted a proposal for a levy on international currency transactions. The idea was not greeted with enthusiasm, as the 1970s were a period of optimism and confidence in floating exchange rages. Yet, whenever currency crises erupted during the past decades, the proposal for a levy on international currency transactions would once again arise. In the 1990s, two additional facts have sharpened interest in the Tobin tax proposal. First is the growing volume of foreign exchange trading. Second, interest is coming not only from policymakers and experts concerned with the smooth functioning of financial markets. It is shared by those concerned with public financing of development--the fiscal crisis of the state as well as the growing need for international cooperation on problems such as the environment, poverty, peace and security.
This work makes a systematic analysis of the proposal for a foreign exchange transactions levy. Its chapters examine the economic desirability of such a levy, its technical and political feasibility, its revenue potential, the possible uses of that revenue, and related administrative and institutional aspects.

The contemporary fiscal crisis faced by the American federal government represents the end of a fiscal regime that began with the financing of World War II. In this volume, an inter-disciplinary group of scholars explores the history of American taxation and public finance since 1941 in an attempt to understand the political, social and economic forces that have shaped the current regime. Specifically, they examine the historical context of earlier tax regimes and national crises; explore the ways post-1941 governments used taxation to finance war, social security, and economic stability; analyze the politics of post-1941 tax reform; and apply history to a consideration of the dynamics that are likely to characterize future tax regimes. The contributors are convinced that understanding the long-term development of American taxation and public finance will help policy makers determine the possibilities and constraints that must be taken in account in evaluating, and possibly reforming, the ways in which the nation pays for government.