It wasn't a very good week for the Obama administration. Republicans have been accusing President Obama of allowing political concerns to trump policy for years, but the public simply hasn't bitten on issues like the infamous Benghazi talking points memo. But last week the GOP was handed new ammu... [Read More]

House Republicans don't like the idea of raising the debt ceiling. Many would like to see steep spending cuts that would balance the government's finances and prevent the need for further debt ceiling increases. Others view the debt ceiling as conservatives' only leverage over President Obama an... [Read More]

By now the retirement of Max Baucus is old news. Most commentators have shifted from talking about the Montana senator's career to discussing how his seat might flip to Republicans in the next election. The mainstream press is also reporting Baucus's statements about his house in Montana, his den... [Read More]

The U.S. tax system allows multinationals to effectively indefinitely defer taxes on profits earned by active foreign affiliates until that money is repatriated to the United States. Deferral as a cornerstone of tax policy dates from a compromise during the Kennedy administration and has long been... [Read More]

Happy tax day! It's April 15, and undoubtedly many Americans are rushing to the post office to mail their returns to the IRS. The rise of e-filing and the increasing use of return preparers and TurboTax has significantly reduced last-minute traffic, but the United States always has its share of pr... [Read More]

President Obama will finally release a budget this week. Obama consistently ignores the statutory timeline for releasing his budget, and this year is the latest he has ever put forward a fiscal proposal. On all things administrative, the president is frequently dilatory. But those waiting with bate... [Read More]

Another Senate Democrat is retiring. South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson will not seek a fourth term in 2014, leaving an open seat that Republicans will be heavily favored to pick up. Johnson's retirement brings the total number of Democrats leaving the Senate to five. The possibility that Johnson will... [Read More]

The most progressive tax in the United States is also one of the most unpopular. Thanks to Republican-led efforts to characterize it as a death tax, the estate tax is almost universally reviled in Congress and by voters. To emphasize the point, last week the Democrat-controlled Senate voted 80 to 1... [Read More]

Paul Ryan may have been on the ticket opposing President Obama in the last election, but that hasn't stopped the House Budget Committee chair from copying the president in at least one important respect. Much like Obama, Ryan keeps releasing the same budget every year, knowing full well that it ha... [Read More]

Not long ago, I pointed out that Sen. Carl Levin was determined to continue his quest to end offshore tax abuse by U.S. individuals and corporations. The Michigan senator had reintroduced the Cut Unjustified Tax Loopholes Act, a follow-up to his stalled Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. Unless something ha... [Read More]

The United States has a tax gap problem. The IRS has estimated that the tax gap may be as much as $450 billion a year. That's approximately 18 percent of total federal revenues. As Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus pointed out during the healthcare debate, closing the tax gap could have pa... [Read More]

“Charge 'em for the lice, extra for the mice. Two percent for looking in the mirror twice. Here a little slice, there a little cut Three percent for sleeping with the window shut. When it comes to fixing prices There are a lot of tricks I knows. How it all increases, all them bits and pieces. Jesu... [Read More]

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles have become synonymous with deficit reduction. Their names are thrown about by lawmakers and the White House whenever one side or the other wants to act serious about a grand bargain on taxes and spending. But the details of the Simpson-Bowles plan, originally releas... [Read More]

President Obama is going to call for tax reform in his State of the Union address this week. According to sources, the president will use tax reform as a way to lower the deficit, promote job creation, and address the growing income disparity. The latter will be couched in terms of how to increase... [Read More]

If Sen. Carl Levin ever feels like Sisyphus, constantly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back to the bottom, he certainly doesn't let anyone know it. For years, Levin has been on a quest to close international taxation loopholes. And for just as long, he has largely failed to persu... [Read More]

The derivatives market in the United States is estimated to be $600 trillion, which is 10 times the size of the global economy. Excessive trading in derivatives probably contributed heavily to the meltdown in the financial sector that threw the United States -- and the world -- into recession in 20... [Read More]

President Obama and Democrats may think that taxes should go up more on upper-income earners, but count Phil Mickelson among those who disagree. The golfer recently told reporters that he planned to make “drastic changes” because of California's new tax laws. He hinted that retirement might be a... [Read More]

The fiscal cliff might be behind the United States, but the effects of the deal to avoid it will be felt for a long time. Unlike many other hasty tax compromises drafted on Capitol Hill, the provisions of the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) are mostly permanent. The income tax rates, the estate... [Read More]

The fiscal cliff may have been averted, but anyone who just received their first paycheck of the new year probably noticed that it was a bit smaller. That may have come as a shock to many middle-income taxpayers. Didn’t President Obama just spend a whole week touting the fact that he had saved 98... [Read More]

Raising taxes in the middle of a weak economy is usually political suicide. Herbert Hoover did it in 1932 and condemned the Republican Party to decades of rebuilding. Bill Clinton did it in 1993 and watched as the GOP took control of Congress in 1994 for the first time in decades. And now President... [Read More]

Tax competition is a positive force in the global economy, according to Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute. He believes that governments competing against each other to attract business makes tax codes more efficient and helps economic growth. It certainly helps businesses, but it isn’t clear j... [Read More]

The GOP has a Senate problem. Everyone knows it because it has been front and center in the last two election cycles. Despite a favorable political climate in 2010 and a map tilted their way in 2012, Republicans have failed to make much headway toward retaking the Senate (the party is only up five... [Read More]

It took John Kerry 14 years to get a seat on the Senate Finance Committee. That’s supposedly what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Angus King when the Senate’s newest independent requested a seat on the prestigious taxwriting committee. King was hoping to replace Olympia Snowe, the retiring... [Read More]