Tax News Feb. 7 - 11

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News
THURSDAY
Certainty on Tax, but Just for Two Years
The law set a $5 million-per-person exemption from the federal estate tax and raised the maximum amount that could be passed tax-free to heirs before death to $5 million from $1 million.

WEDNESDAY
Raise taxes or cut cops? Camden, N.J., to decide
Last month, Camden laid off 160 police officers, nearly half the force, as well as 60 of its 215 firefighters. The proposed tax increase would be used to fund the rehiring of 47 of those police officers and 13 firefighters.
Obama tries to woo business, slams 'burdensome' tax
In speech, president aims to mend relationship with Chamber of Commerce.
Companies that pay a lower tax rate than you
According to figures from the Internal Revenue Service, all active corporations had an effective tax rate of 27.3% in 2006, the most recent information available.
Energy Tax Credits Remain in Limbo
Supporters say uncertainty about extending the credits discourages businesses from making decisions about long-term investments.
10 Big Corporate Tax Breaks, and Who Benefits
Those ‘expenditures’ will cost the U.S. government $628.6 billion over the next five years, according to a 2010 report from the Tax Foundation.

TUESDAY
By one measure, federal taxes lowest since 1950
Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.
Tax Overhaul Complicated by Difficulty of Defining Fairness
The president’s bipartisan debt-fighting commission suggested eliminating many of those tax expenditures, including provisions like the mortgage interest deduction, which reduced annual tax revenue by more than $92 billion in 2010.

Economist Comments
THURSDAY
Obama's Big Lie On Taxes
Indeed, in 2009 one of the first things Obama did after entering office was to slap a 156% increase in the federal tax on tobacco - about 62 cents a pack - to pay for the children's health insurance program.
When one man's 'loophole' is another man's stimulus
This perverts the free market, allocating resources not where there's demand, but where there's the best tax treatment.

WEDNESDAY
Job Tax Plan Lands With a Thud
Hill GOP Leader Says Obama Proposal 'Isn't Going Anywhere,' but Some State Officials React Positively.

TUESDAY
I Didn't Raise Taxes Once'
In his historic health-care bill, for example, there is the new $27 billion "fee" on drug companies that is already in effect. Next year, device manufacturers will get hit to the tune of $20 billion, and heath insurers will pay $60 billion starting in 2014—all of which are de facto tax increases because these collections will be passed on to consumers as higher costs.

MONDAY
Tax code can be made less taxing
More than 6.3 million new jobs were created in just the two years that followed the ’86 reform. That is more than double the number of jobs created during the full eight years that followed the Bush tax cuts of 2001.

Blogs
FRIDAY
Secretly Happy Colleges Should Mean Overtly Angry Taxpayers
Yesterday, House Republicans introduced their preliminary list of spending cuts, cuts that were, they declared, "to go deep." Unfortunately, coming in at just $74 billion, they were about as deep as onion skin.

THURSDAY
The 1993 Clinton Tax Increase Did Not Lead to the Budget Surpluses of the Late 1990s
...all that really matters is that the burden of federal spending grew very slowly. Not only was there spending restraint, but Congress and the White House agreed on a fairly substantial tax cut in 1997.
High Speed Funding in President’s Budget Means More Waste of Taxpayer Dollars
According to The Washington Post, the total price tag of the scheme would weigh in at $600 billion over 20 years.

WEDNESDAY
Corporate tax: only a piece of tax revenue pie
Indeed, even though the U.S. corporate rate is the second highest in the world, corporate tax revenues amounted to only about 1.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product last year–less than half the average among major industrialized countries.
Currently Low Tax Receipts No Excuse to Raise Taxes
The recent “Great Recession” caused incomes to plummet at a historic rate. Hence tax revenues dropped to historic lows as a share of the economy as well.

TUESDAY
Double Tax Rates, Quadruple the Economic Harm
This is a big deal when you design a tax system for the entire economy. To avoid needless economic harm, you should aim for low tax rates and the broadest possible tax base.
Rep. Hanna’s Corporate Tax Cut
...corporate tax reform could be the 2011 version of the Clinton-GOP welfare reforms of 1996.
Q&A: How Do Unemployment Taxes Work?
That rate has been 6.2% on the first $7,000 of each worker’s wages since the 1980s. In most cases employers receive a credit that offsets much of that tax rate, lowering it to 0.8%, or $56 a year per employee.
Even PolitiFact Admits: President Obama Raised Taxes
Politifact fails to total up all of Obamacare’s tax hikes, but The Heritage Foundation did. All told Obamacare contains 18 separate tax increases that will cost taxpayers $503 billion between 2010 and 2019.

MONDAY
Number of the Week: Businesses’ Unemployment Taxes Rise
37%: The rise in businesses’ unemployment-insurance payments in 2010.
The Transformation of Student Loans Into Taxes
This factor provides the motivation for both individuals to pursue higher education and for the government to support their doing so, because at a minimum, people who are likely to earn higher incomes will also be likely to pay higher taxes.
Sugar Taxes Would Hit Poor, Minorities
Bottom line: A sugar tax might help reduce obesity and the health hazards that come with it, but it’s a highly regressive approach.

Reports
FRIDAY
Corporate Tax Reform Should Focus on Rate Reduction
The U.S. ended up higher than its international competitors largely by standing still. In the 1980s, the U.S. led the world in reducing its tax rates, first in 1981 as part of the Reagan tax cuts and then again in the 1986 tax reform. Other countries soon followed suit.