Tax reform no longer a certainty.

Tax reform. Seems simple, unless you can’t agree on what needs to be reformed.  Everyone would agree that the tax code, all twenty volumes and 13,000 pages, needs some editing and simplification.  But reform in the mind of most conservatives is about reducing tax rates, flatter taxes, and a less progressive structure.  Liberals look for higher capital gains taxes, elimination of loopholes, and more progression.  There is as much as $1Trillion in additional tax revenues on the table that both sides will have to give in if this is going to work.  Dump the estate tax, eliminate loopholes, subsidies, and rebates, drop marginal rates, rest the AMT, eliminate individual deductions, and
In the meantime the special interests are already lining up to lobby the piss out of Congress to protect their cheese.  Gas and Oil is fighting to maintain its exploration subsidies, multinationals want to eliminate taxes on foreign earned income, R&D and technology companies want their tax credits maintained, hedge fund and private equity executives want lower capital gains rates, and the mortgage industry wants to protect the mortgage deduction to name a few.
But is there any intestinal fortitude in Washington to do the right thing?  Are the Republicans so entrenched in their ideological bunkers they will let this opportunity pass by?  I think they are fighting true reform via compromise because they believe they will capture both the Senate and the White House next year and then they are free to do what they want.  
The last true tax reform was the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the hallmark piece of legislation from the Reagan Years.   Major reform that simplified the tax code, reduced the number of brackets, lowered rates for ordinary income while raising rates for investment income, eliminated tax breaks, and the AMT was revised.  This happened because of bipartisan efforts of Gephardt, Bradley, and O’Neill.  Sadly, the odds of that happening are as long as Ronald Reagan getting the Republican nomination in 2012.
Not  holding my breath.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Secular American Jew and a Love for Israel

As many of you know, I have dedicated many postings to the State of Israel on a range of topics including: it’s history, the present day government, the Jewish-Palestinian question, and the region in general.   Growing up in a liberal conservative Jewish household (the oxymoron is quite common as American Jews were almost exclusively political liberals and the conservative branch of Judaism the most common) and attending Hebrew school as a kid you obviously build an affinity for the State of Israel.   I do not remember the Six-Day War of 1967, but I have vivid memories of celebrating Israel’s 25 th anniversary in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War later that year.   As a ten year old attending Yom Kippur services I saw the worried looks on my parents and the other adults at the shul as members of the congregation would periodically step outside to get news reports from car radios and transistor radios (We still drove and used electrical appliances during the high holidays, though several fam
Read more

September 10, 2001 was a Monday

Where were you on September 10, 2001?   What were you worried about?   What occupied your thoughts, worries, hopes, and dreams?   What were you excited about?   What were you interested in? September 10, 2001 was a Monday. Cindy and I were still laughing about the recent visit from the Three Amigas: Leah, Roseanne, and Valerie, and the adventures of Sedona, a certain screen door, a forgotten carrot cake, and breakfast for champions.   We were also dealing with a 1995 Chevy Blazer that seemed to be on its last legs, surviving our first Arizona summer, thinking about what to remodel in the house, dealing with the concept of a Home Owners Association, thinking that my best shot at a World Series game maybe with the fledgling Arizona Diamondbacks, and looking forward to a visit from Scott, Lori, and the boys. But what about America?   We knew nothing about a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville; Guantanamo Bay was the setting for A Few Good Men, and we still taped shows and listene
Read more

Sunni and Shia: So who are the bad guys again?

Baby faces vs. heals?   Cowboys vs Indians?   Good guy always where the white hat.   “Dig is he a good guy or bad guy?”   Bad guys always, looked, well, bad. You’re either with us or you’re against us.   Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the axis of evil. Americans, for the most part, have a pretty simple outlook on conflict: just tell us who the bad guys are and we’ll know who to root against.   We tend to lump similar races and peoples into larger buckets, mostly due to the media’s inclination to treat us like potential Jeff Foxworthy competitors.   But the world is anything but simple and as I have written previously, the Middle East is as confusing and confounding place as you can find.   During the Iran and Iraq war of the 1980’s most Americans took the position that “…as long as they kill each other, I’m good.”   When civil war ravaged Afghanistan, we joined the side of the Mujahedeen because they were fighting the Soviets and the Soviets were our archenemy, a position they occupie
Read more