Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Tax journalism and the Official TigerHawk Tax Reform Proposal
If you want to prepare for the imminent burst of tax legislation, go to the web site of the President's bipartisan Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. There is a lot of very interesting information, much of it geared to non-specialists who nevertheless have an interest in federal taxation. The Panel has been doing a lot of work, and has solicited two rounds of comments from the public, all of which are available here.
I was too lame to put in the Official TigerHawk tax reform proposal within the comment period, but I'll offer it here to my enormously influential readership. You will probably agree that its enactment is not possible politically, even or especially with an all-Republican government, but that doesn't mean we can't dream:
1. Raise the exemption on the estate tax to $25 million, and index it to inflation. Lower the estate tax to 15% on everything above that level. Wipe out the estate planning industry, which is a dead weight loss to the economy. [Note that there is no good reason not to abolish the estate tax entirely, but even in America populist sentiment probably requires that at least vast fortunes see some redistribution in the transfer between generations.]
2. Abolish the step-up of capital gains basis at death. Death should have essentially no tax consequences, including tax windfalls, so there is no good reason for the step-up. Liquidation of assets, however, should have tax consequences. Therefore, family farms and businesses will no longer be sold just to pay taxes, but if they are sold capital gains taxes should be paid.
3. Abolish the corporate income tax. The corporate income tax is enormously expensive to plan around and collect, and it distorts corporate behavior. Wipe out the tax departments of major law firms, and the tax practices of big accounting firms. Significantly diminish the tax departments of corporations. Save the economy a bundle in dead weight loss. Watch while corporate America scrambles to reallocate income back into the United States. Watch the dollar rise. Watch campaign contributions to members of Congress go away because rifle-shot tax breaks are no longer possible (oops!).
4. Now that you've wiped out the corporate income tax, make both dividend and interest income ordinary income (effectively raising the rates on both). Define long-term capital gains as genuinely long-term (I would say five years). The only argument for the lower rate on capital gains is inflation uncertainty, and that's fairly predictable over 5 years, so it can be priced into the value of the asset at acquisition. In fairness, it is less predictable over longer periods of time, so the lower rates are justified. [I appreciate that you could prevent the taxing of purely nominal "inflation gains" by indexing the cost basis to inflation, but that's more complicated than the rough justice of using a lower rate for genuinely long-term capital gains.]
5. Phase out the home mortgage interest deduction over, say 20 years. I would kill off 5% of the interest deduction every year for the next two decades. It is a stupid deduction because it inspires people to overinvest in housing and it creates a bias in favor of ownership over renting. And don't give that American dream nonsense: there are all sorts of countries with high home ownership rates and no mortgage interest deduction.
6. Abolish the deduction for state and local taxes. Force people to care about the thieving weasels in their own states and cities. It is the right and just thing to do -- there is no reason why the citizens of low tax states should subsidize the political decisions of citizens of high tax states. Abolishing this deduction would be the smartest progressive reform -- and it would be progressive -- that the Republicans could make, and they should enact it even if they ignore all of the rest of it.
7. Phase in a scaled tax on fossil fuels, or even the Clinton BTU tax (which was a good idea). If you do it slowly enough, even Americans will adjust their behavior so that they spend the same amount on gasoline and fuel, more or less. The difference will be that more of the money will go to our government instead of the disgusting governments that pump most of the world's oil.
8. Raise the cap on Social Security taxes to $250,000. Raise the age for first benefits to 67, full benefits to 70. This business about working half your damn life and expecting somebody to take care of you the other half has got to stop. I'm getting sick and tired of looking at perfectly healthy -- indeed, glowing -- magazine cover photographs of entirely unproductive retired people who are living high off the hog because Social Security and Medicare cover the basic costs. If you want to retire before you have to, save your money and do it without going on the dole.
9. Abolish the impact of marriage on income taxes. Everybody files as an individual. You have dependents, or you don't. The taxpayers in the house can allocate the dependents and few remaining deductions in whatever fashion keeps their taxes the lowest. Fortunately, under the TigerHawk scheme there won't be many deductions to allocate.
10. Do a huge pile of math, and solve for marginal tax rates that get as back to more or less the same percentage of GDP that we started with. Suck up some dislocation in the economy, but after a year or two watch everything start to rock.
Comments?
37 Comments:
By 
TigerHawk, at
Wed May 11, 01:35:00 PM:
The tax accountants and attorneys will find jobs. I've never met a good corporate tax lawyer who could not do fairly complicated corporate work with one brain tied behind his back. As for the waitrons, people still gotta eat. My guess is that the high end eateries suffer, and less expensive places would do better. In any case, a little less diversity in haute cuisine is hardly a reason to sustain the corporate tax.
By Unknown, at
Wed May 11, 02:23:00 PM:
I like your ideas and agree with most of what you suggest. Your plan hasn't got a chance: too many oxen get gored.
By Unknown, at
Wed May 11, 02:23:00 PM:
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed May 11, 02:41:00 PM:
Would be pretty rough on the real estate market. Don't think I'd touch that. I appreciate the phasing period, but the market would adjust immediately. If you want to mitigate the effect of the real estate interest deduction, just don't raise it for a very long time. But to do away with it would be quite fatal to those of us long real estate in high tax jurisdictions.
By 
, at
Wed May 11, 03:04:00 PM:
Jack,
A sterling batch of suggestions. And you should add that the existing corporate income tax can only be paid in one of three logical ways - by employees in the form of smaller salaries, by owners in the form of diminished profits, or by consumers in the form of higher prices. Buildings do not pay taxes - people do.
Coach Paul
By Strabo the Lesser, at
Wed May 11, 03:12:00 PM:
I work for a growing, and highly profitable semiconductor company. We, the industry of the future, are taxed heavily to subsidize the industries of the past- coal, steel, textiles, etc. It's a stupid policy which ought to be changed.
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:20:00 PM:
All the news that is print to fit...
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:43:00 PM:
Not bad, Tiger Hawk. My only criticism is over the Step Up In Basis at Death being eliminated. As long as the exemption is $25 Million then, yeah, the Basis Step Up can be jettisoned. As it is now, getting rid of the Step Up in Basis would be way too onerous both with respect to record keeping and actually paying the tax on the gains.
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:54:00 PM:
rafinlay - actually, I doubt this plan will have much of an impact on T&E - anymore than it would have an impact on employee salaries (not "deductible" anymore either). To the extent that T&E is not a legitimate expense (that is something companies would do regardless of tax consequences) it is on an individual basis (that is, send your sales force to a "conference" in Hawaii at company expense rather than pay them a taxable cash bonus). That wouldn't change under this plan.
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:57:00 PM:
If you eliminate the mortgage deduction over 40 years, you effectively remove any impact it would have on housing prices. Very few people carry mortgages of more than 30 years.
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:59:00 PM:
You're wrong about mortgage interest and estate tax. Renter's are advantaged by the deductibility all of their landlord's expenses: mortgage interest, taxes and maintenance, as well as depreciation taken on the structure. High marginal estate tax rates push money to deductible private charities.
By , at
Wed May 11, 03:59:00 PM:
Taxation of fossil fuels ends up being a heavily regressive tax. A better solution is a sliding scale tax on the sale of new vehicles. Base this tax solely on fuel inefficiency. It is also easier to get political support for this versus a raw tax on fossil fuels. This doesn’t touch electricity production, but the US is unique among nations in the fact that auto pollution is often a more significant factor.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:00:00 PM:
while i agree with most of your plan, it doesn't stand a chance of clearing congress. here's an alternative - taxpayers can either stick with the existing tax monstrosity or pay a flat rate of 25% on all income after deducting $10k per adult and $5k per child. the 25% would need to be adjusted to bring in roughly the same amount of revenue the federal government brings in today.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:06:00 PM:
I would add two things and change one.
1. Eliminate withholding of taxes. Have everyone pay at once.
2. Eliminate the employer contribution to payroll taxes; make the employee pay all of it, and don't withhold anything.
3. I don't get why you want to raise social security taxes. It's today's retired and dead who lived it up on the backs of today's workers, children and unborn. There's no reason to punish us because the Greatest Generation (TM) decided to steak $11,000,000,000,000 from us.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:09:00 PM:
one factor cited as a reason to eliminate the estate tax is the high business failure rate after the death of the owner due to the cash paid to pay the estate tax. interestingly, countries with high estate tax rates and countries with low estate tax rates have almost identical failure rates for the businesses taken over by the second generation after the death of the owner.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:21:00 PM:
Pretty good tax reform plan, Tigerhawk. It's actually been tried. Not nearly as cleanly as you suggest, of course (and I'd like to see your plan enacted cleanly), but the 1981 Reagan tax cuts coupled with the 1986 Tax Reform Act went a pretty long way toward broadening the base and lowering the rates, which is basically what you propose. And what's happened in the 20+ years since? Congress and the Administration, Republican and Democrat alike, just couldn't and can't leave it alone. Bells and whistles in the form of targeted credits and deductions just keep getting added. It was said of Clinton that he never met a tax credit he didn't like, but the GOP is just as bad. The Bush 2001 tax bill was a Rube Goldberg assemblage of specific credits and benefits, enacted by the very same folks who demand "simplification."
Lesson? Even when the stars are aligned for a degree of good tax reform, as in 1986, "reform" doesn't last. Seems to be in the nature of the political beast. So I say let's try your plan. But it'll only stay intact a few years (so you may as well leave out things like your 20-year phase-in of the mortgage interest deduction repeal), and then we'll have to go back to the well.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:29:00 PM:
The argument on home mortgage deductibility by CardiinalPark is a perfect example of bad tax policy distorting a market, in this case, real estate. Deductibility of interest is fueling speculative real estate investment, and driving prices beyond historic levels of sustainability.
I bought my house as a good investment. the deductibility of interest is just a bonus.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:30:00 PM:
All told a great proposal.
The cutoff of SS tax should be set equal to the salary of Congress.
And it should apply to all income, wages, capital gains, or interest. The employers share should be eliminated.
After exempting roughly $100M indexed, tax estates as income.
My outlook is that the dead have no rights. So regard estates as income to the heirs.
By , at
Wed May 11, 04:34:00 PM:
While there is a lot to like in your proposal there is also a lot to dislike. The step up in basis is really a tax simplification tool which generally keeps record retention to something less than forever. Eliminating the death tax isn't so bad as long as you can get state's to reenact their rule against perpetuities.
In addition, it seems inconsistent to dislike using the tax code to promote social "good" and then propose a BTU tax. If the tax code has no business promoting home ownership, it has no business promoting fuel efficiency.
I'm not sure I see an overarching theme to your proposal other than simplicity for simplicity's sake. It's doesn't cut taxes (you explicitly state it should be revenue neutral) and it merely shifts social engineering from one set of objectives to another (in essence continuing the tax code's drag on economic activity). The Soviets had a simple tax code. Everything belongs to the state. But they still had a shitty economic system.
By , at
Wed May 11, 05:33:00 PM:
I'll save the substantive comment for a point when I have more time, but for now: I'm a good corporate tax lawyer who has done fairly complicated corporate work. The problem, Tigerhawk, is that the deal work is boring as hell. After you've negotiated the same set of issues in a dozen M&A deals, it becomes virtually impossible to care about the next set of reps & warranties. I'm not worried about my livelihood, but I'm quite fond of having a means of making a living this good that is intellectually stimulating.
-160 pounds of highly educated deadweight
By , at
Wed May 11, 06:58:00 PM:
Never saw the point in taxing capital gains also I've never seen the point in not taxing capital gains. Let me explain. Markets work best when capital is allowed to flow where it can be best used. But taxing it whenver it is exchanged prevents this and distorts the markets. Allowing conversion of one form of capital into another tax free seems to be the solution (even into a money market account). Then taxing it when it is converted into income, just like anyone elses income seems sensible.
By Pile On®, at
Wed May 11, 07:10:00 PM:
I like the idea of eliminating the corporate income tax. As Ronald Reagan said "Corporations don't pay taxes, people do".
I can almost hear the wailing of the left now.
By , at
Wed May 11, 07:25:00 PM:
What is the definition of capital? Are second homes, art and collectibles different from stocks and bonds?
It seems if your idea is to grow your money, paying tax on the growth will not stop that endeavor -- it will just make you think first.
By John Fisher, at
Wed May 11, 08:21:00 PM:
I like all of it except the tax on fuels. Any tax placed on fossil fuel consumption will only distort the energy market. Trust the market forces to price energy not the bureaucrats or the tax happy Congresscritters.
By geoffrobinson, at
Wed May 11, 08:27:00 PM:
Mortgage idea is great b/c it will prevent real estate bubbles. Local & state tax idea is genius for the reasons you enumerate.
By , at
Wed May 11, 09:49:00 PM:
These would have been great suggestions for reform in, say, the seventies, but all of these suggestions suffer from a common problem in that they aren't consistent with what we know today about capitalism: taxes on production (property, income, business taxes) produce market misallocation, unemployment, whipsaw business cycles, inflation, and an imperative for government to poke it's nose into every aspect of Americans' private lives and keep it there.
Consumption-based taxes would achieve every goal that your system is designed to achieve except it would do it better. And that's the thing to remember: even though we have different ideas, our goals are nearly identical.
The only exception here is your idea of fuel taxes. As petroleum-based fuels become more scarce for whatever reason, they will get more expensive and Americans will "adjust their behavior" accordingly. I simply cannot fathom why anyone thinks we need the government protecting us from high fuel prices by arbitrarily making fuel more expensive. It's senseless, really.
:jackson
By , at
Thu May 12, 12:10:00 AM:
To make a lasting change, you need to build a constituency for lower tax and spend. A simple tax system with rules to prevent gaming is the place to start. Abolish corporate tax, estate tax and social security/medical taxes. Institute a flat tax with a deductible that excludes the bottom 20% of payers. Corporations are taxed on the same flate rate. Implement a wealth tax on assets only with a deductible that excludes the bottom 90% of asset holders and put a maximum 1% limit on the rate. Some adjustment will be required for financial insitutions. The wealth tax would apply to all individuals, corporations, endowments, churches...any holder of assets.
By , at
Thu May 12, 12:16:00 AM:
Getting rid of the corporate income tax should be the first priority. This (in my marginally informed opinion) is the worst kind of tax because most people don't even realise they are paying it in the form of higher prices and lower salaries. I am all for a taxation system that causes the most visible pain to the taxpayer - which will create a more informed and less waste-tolerant society.
By , at
Thu May 12, 04:08:00 AM:
In addition to interest deductibility, landlords get to deduct costs of maintenance, which homeowners don't (I wish!).
Landlords run a business. Businesses are only be taxed on their profits. Deductions for maintenance aren't some kind of "gift". That's merely how profits are calculated on tax forms.
Mortgage idea is great b/c it will prevent real estate bubbles.
The bubbles in California have very little to do with mortgage deduction and very much to do with artificial scarcity due to environmental and aesthetic regulation.
By , at
Thu May 12, 08:56:00 AM:
I have a good idea. Abolish the whole freaking federal tax system. Have some genius figure out how much we need to keep basic federal government services (protect and defend, remember?) going and eliminate the rest. Have each state contribute their proportionate share of that amount (get the same genius to calculate that too) and have the states decide how to tax their citizens. I'm sure there are a million problems with my idea but I am sick to death of the way these bottom feeders in Washington misuse my hard earned money.
;>) Cathy
By , at
Thu May 12, 12:30:00 PM:
*applauds Cathy*
Here's just the thing
http://www.pafairtax.org/facts.html
Perfectly balanced, fair to everyone, low-income families benefit, high-income are encouraged to re-invest and produce more. And No more frelling IRS!
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu May 12, 01:43:00 PM:
A couple of people have made observations re: my mortgage interest deductibility comment. Forgive me if this sounds like pontification.
Messing around with tax policy is dangerous and unpredictable stuff, especially if you engage in contractionary policy changes. I don't have the data, but I think more US household wealth is derived from equity in people's homes than any other single source. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure it ain't close. Oh yes, and it's massively leveraged. And a large percentage of many important lending institutions have a significant portion of their balance sheets tied up in real estate. Let's also not forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We are talking about a HUGE part of our economy. The hugest. The 1987 Tax Reform Act set back real estate for 6-7 years and contributed to a fairly unpleasant recession and bank troubles in 1990. There were other contributors too (like FIRREA - the bank "bailout" act). Anybody remember Bank of New England? And countless others. Remember when Citigroup couldn't finance itself and a Saudi Prince had to?
So if you start tinkering with the mortgage interest deduction, I will wager that every market in the US is a short, and we will wind up in quite an economic pickle.
I appreciate the view that says let it phase in over a long time, then it's irrelevant. No, it's not. Just because a policy change is enacted with a long lead time, doesn't mean markets don't adjust immediately. And when a market is as leveraqed as the real estate market is, small adjustments in overall value lead to very large adjustments in equity. Especially when rates are moving up already.
If you truly want to phase out the deduction's impact over a long period of time, just don't increase the ceiling anymore (currently $1.1mm, I believe). Inflation will gradually reduce the value of the deduction. And that won't hurt anybody or anything.
By , at
Thu May 12, 02:02:00 PM:
One thing about the 'FairTax' is that it would put a serious amount of pressure on the 10 million illegal aliens to get their bloody documentation in order.
By , at
Thu May 12, 02:48:00 PM:
3. I don't get why you want to raise social security taxes. It's today's retired and dead who lived it up on the backs of today's workers, children and unborn. There's no reason to punish us because the Greatest Generation (TM) decided to steak $11,000,000,000,000 from us.
I don't see why you think that "social security taxes" have anything to do with retirement. They can call it anything they want, and indeed they call it all sorts of things -- I spent 13 years paying "self-employment tax". Well actually, what I paid was called "quarterly estimates" even though they weren't paid in even quarters, and I wrote one check for each payment and it covered all sorts of taxes with all sorts of names. But the bottom line fact is that the government collects this giant blob of money, borrows another giant blob of money, and then pays out a series of bloblettes on everything from soldiers' salaries to social security payments to government buildings in W. VA brought home by Bob "The Kleagle of Pork" Byrd.
Suppose the Smith family and the Jones family are identical in every way except that John Smith makes $180K per year and Mary Smith is a SAH mom, while Mike and Suzy Jones each make $90K per year. So why should the Jones family have to shell out $10K/yr more than the Smith family when it comes to paying up for the WOT or the Kleagle's pork products or rich old folks' viagra?
Money isn't money if it isn't fungible, and there is something kind of sleazy about folks who make $100K/yr paying a lower tax rate than people who make $90K per year. But what is really sleazy is the high-pitched whining and mile-a-minute rationalizations coming out of the $90,001-and-up crowd (who are certainly well-off by any measure) when it comes to any suggestions that the tax code shouldn't be regressive.
cathy :-)
By , at
Fri May 13, 01:15:00 PM:
Make every taxpayer pay whatever is due monthly. No withholding. Everybody will have the godawful level of taxes uppermost in his mind 12 times a year.
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