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Old 10-26-2008, 07:19 AM
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Exclamation The Election Choice: Taxes

The Election Choice: Taxes

The difference between candidates is the widest it's been in over two decades.
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When it comes to taxes, the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain is arguably as wide as it's been in a presidential race since Ronald
Reagan and Walter Mondale battled in 1984. Sen. Obama is proposing to raise taxes more than any recent candidate, while Sen. McCain wants to cut them substantially. Most of the campaign debate has been over whose taxes would be raised, and whose cut.

Here are the facts:



Mr. Obama would roll back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for taxpayers in the top two brackets, raising the top two marginal rates of income tax to 36% and 39.6% from 33% and 35%. The 33% rate begins to hit this year at incomes of $164,550 for an individual and $200,300 for joint filers. Mr. Obama claims no "working families" earning less than $250,000 would pay more in taxes, but that's because he defines income more broadly than the taxable income line on the IRS form. If you're an individual with taxable income of $164,550, you will pay more taxes.

The Democrat would also reinstate the phaseout of the personal exemptions and itemized deductions for married couples making more than $250,000 a year. Those phaseouts would raise the top marginal tax rate for millions of taxpayers by another 1.5 percentage points.

Capital gains and dividend taxes would increase to 20% from 15% for those making more than $250,000, although capital-gains taxes on investments in "start-ups" would be eliminated.
The Election Choice: Further Reading

Health CareThe candidates differ on the merits of tying insurance to a job.
Mr. Obama's most dramatic departure from current tax policy is his promise to lift the cap on income on which the Social Security payroll tax is applied. Currently, the employer and employee each pay 6.2% up to $102,000, a level that is raised for inflation each year. The Obama campaign says he'd raise the payroll tax rate on incomes above $250,000 by as much as two to four percentage points -- though it's unclear if that higher rate would apply to the employee, the employer, or both.

In any case, lifting the cap would change the nature of Social Security from an insurance program -- which pays out based on how much you paid in -- into a wealth-transfer program that is far more progressive.

Taken together, these add up to about a 10-percentage-point hike in marginal tax rates for those making more than $250,000 a year, including millions of small businesses that pay taxes at individual rates. The "marginal" rate refers to the rate paid on the next dollar of income, and it has an especially strong influence on decisions to work and invest.

Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel has proposed an additional 4% "surtax" on incomes above $200,000. This would further increase the top marginal federal income tax rate to close to 50% -- or slightly above that, depending on the rate of the new Social Security tax
-- when combined with Mr. Obama's hikes.

Mr. Obama is also famously promising that 95% of all Americans will get a tax cut. However, he would not reduce tax rates. His tax cuts come in the form of tax credits, most of which are also "refundable." In tax jargon,
"refundable" means that you get the credit even if you owe no income taxes at all -- which means the government cuts you a check. These credits include:

- a credit of $500 to offset the payroll tax on the first $8,100 in earnings;

- a 10% mortgage-interest credit for those who don't itemize their deductions and so don't currently benefit from the mortgage-interest deduction;

- an expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would raise the income eligibility, reduce the EITC "marriage penalty," and increase payouts for families with three or more children;

- an increase of the college tuition tax credit to $4,000, from $1,800;

- a 50% "savers" credit of up to $500.

- The child-care credit would be made fully refundable and the credit increased to 50% of child-care costs, from 20%-35% now.

According to the Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's tax credits would increase the share of Americans who pay no income tax to 48% from an estimated 38% this year.

On corporate taxes, the Obama campaign has proposed to eliminate "loopholes" for oil and gas companies and rewrite the rules for how multinational corporations are taxed. In particular, he has proposed to treat foreign-source income the same as income earned domestically -- which means subjecting all income earned by American companies around the world to the 35% U.S. corporate rate, which is the world's second-highest. He is also promising a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies.

As for Mr. McCain, the central plank of his personal income-tax proposals is to make permanent almost all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. This would leave the top marginal rate at 35%. The one exception is the death or estate tax, which expires for one year in 2010. Mr. McCain wants a 15% death tax on estates larger than $5 million. Mr. Obama wants a 45% rate on estates larger than $3.5 million.

Mr. McCain would also increase the dependent exemption by two-thirds -- to $6,000 per dependent from $3,500.

Mr. McCain would lower the corporate income-tax rate to 25% from 35% today, and allow full expensing, temporarily, of some investments in plant and equipment. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain has said he would "close loopholes" on oil and gas companies and reconfigure the tax regime for multinationals.

The Republican's most dramatic proposal is to introduce an optional simplified tax system with only two rates and larger standard deductions and exemptions. Although Sen. McCain first put forward this proposal months ago, the details of it remain sketchy. In rough outline, taxpayers would be able to choose to pay under the current tax code or file under the optional semiflat tax.

Both candidates have said they would permanently index the Alternative Minimum Tax to inflation. In reality, both would have to do far more to change the AMT, which hits more middle-class taxpayers each year, and which members of Congress have many proposals to alter or repeal.

In sum, Mr. Obama is proposing to use the tax code to substantially redistribute income -- raising tax rates on a minority of taxpayers to finance tax credits and direct income supplements to millions of others.

How much revenue his higher rates would raise depends on how much less those high-earners would work, or how much they would change their practices to shelter their income from those higher rates.

By contrast, Mr. McCain is proposing some kind of tax reduction for most Americans who pay taxes. He says he would finance those cuts by reducing the rate of growth in federal spending.

-- By Brian M. Carney
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.





http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122488938501868507.html
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Old 10-26-2008, 08:50 PM
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My Personal Work Incentives


Here is a question that you may have been thinking about: How do the different candidates' tax plans affect Greg Mankiw's incentive to work?

Okay, you probably haven't been thinking about this. But I have, because, after all, I am Greg Mankiw. And if you are here reading my blog, maybe you have some interest in the random thoughts running through my brain. So bear with me.

Let me start with my personal situation: I am a pretty lucky guy. I have a comfortable, upper middle class life style that includes one house, two cars, three kids, a wife, and a dog. I am fortunate enough that I don't have trouble keeping that going. I am also fortunate enough that I don't crave much more than I already have. I don't particularly want to own multiple houses or drive a Ferrari or wear Armani suits. You might say that I am close to being sated.

On a regular basis, I am offered opportunities to make some extra money. It could be giving a talk, writing an article, editing a journal, and so on. What incentive is there to put forward that extra work effort?

To a large extent, the beneficiaries of that extra effort are my kids. My lifestyle is, as a first approximation, invariant to my income. But if I make an extra few dollars today, I will leave more to my kids when I move on. I won't leave them enough so they can lead lives of leisure, but perhaps I will leave them enough so they won't have to struggle too much to afford a downpayment on their houses or to send their own kids to college.

Now back to the McCain and Obama tax plans. Here is a neat summary from the Wall Street Journal:


Let me try to put each tax plan into a single number. Let's suppose Greg Mankiw takes on an incremental job today and earns a dollar. How much, as a result, will he leave his kids in T years?

The answer depends on four tax rates. First, I pay the combined income and payroll tax on the dollar earned. Second, I pay the corporate tax rate while the money is invested in a firm. Third, I pay the dividend and capital gains rate as I receive that return. And fourth, I pay the estate tax when I leave what has accumulated to my kids.

Let t1 be the combined income and payroll tax rate, t2 be the corporate tax rate, t3 be the dividend and capital gains tax rate, and t4 be the estate tax rate. And let r be the before-tax rate of return on corporate capital. Then one dollar I earn today will yield my kids:

(1-t1){[1+r(1-t2)(1-t3)]^T}(1-t4).

For my illustrative calculations, let me take r to be 10 percent and my remaining life expectancy T to be 35 years.

If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.

Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.

Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario. In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent.

The bottom line: If you are one of those people out there trying to induce me to do some work for you, there is a good chance I will turn you down. And the likelihood will go up after President Obama puts his tax plan in place. I expect to spend more time playing with my kids. They will be poorer when they grow up, but perhaps they will have a few more happy memories.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html
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Old 10-28-2008, 10:46 AM
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U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, 1913-2008




Note: If you clicked on this link in response to an e-mail, blog post, or message board comparing income taxes under Presidents Clinton and Bush, please see this page: http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/22958.html.
To zoom in, print, select text or search the following document, please use the grey toolbar below.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
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