Posted on 09/04/2010 9:48:54 AM PDT by NaturalBornConservative
Revisiting Static vs. Dynamic Tax Revenue
Comments by: Larry Walker
The Obama Administration's static view on tax policy can never succeed. We all know that Obama is an ideologue who thinks that people who make more money should pay a higher share of taxes, and yet we already have a progressive tax system. But apparently that's not good enough for Obama. Under our present system, roughly 40% of those fortunate enough to be employed don't pay any income taxes at all, while the top 5% of income earners pay 60% of income taxes, and those considered in the top 50% pay 97% of the tax burden. There are some on the other side of the ideological playing field who think this to be unfair, and are promoting a flat tax. But there's more to the story.
The reasoning behind Obama's economic team, or what's left of it anyway, would go something along these lines:
"If we cut taxes, our revenue will decrease, and if we raise taxes, our revenue will increase." "So let's compromise. Let's keep taxes the same on the many, and raise them on the few, that way we'll increase our revenue, and we'll get re-elected too."
Sounds smart, but does it work in real life? True, under a static view of revenue, if taxes are cut, revenue will decrease, and if taxes increase so will revenue, but is government revenue the only concern? What about economic growth? What about restoring confidence in a broken system? What about growth of the job market? Will raising taxes on everyone making over $250,000 per year, and keeping taxes the same for everyone else bring about a robust economic recovery? I think we've been down this road before. The following report, written in 1996, by the Congressional - Joint Economic Committee, already provides the answer.
Source: http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm
During the summer of 1981 the central focus of policy debate was on the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, the Reagan tax cuts. The core of this proposal was a version of the Kemp-Roth bill providing a 25 percent across-the-board cut in personal marginal tax rates. By reducing marginal tax rates and improving economic incentives, ERTA would increase the flow of resources into production, boosting economic growth. Opponents used static revenue projections to argue that ERTA would be a giveaway to the rich because their tax payments would fall.
The criticism that the tax payments of the rich would fall under ERTA was based on a static conception of human behavior. As a 1982 JEC study pointed out,[1] similar across-the-board tax cuts had been implemented in the 1920s as the Mellon tax cuts, and in the 1960s as the Kennedy tax cuts. In both cases the reduction of high marginal tax rates actually increased tax payments by "the rich," also increasing their share of total individual income taxes paid. Unfortunately, estimates of ERTA by the Democrat-controlled CBO continued to show falling tax payment by upper income taxpayers, even after actual IRS data had become available showing a surge of income tax payments by affluent taxpayers.
Given the current interest in tax reform and tax relief, a review of the effects of the Reagan tax cuts on taxpayer behavior and tax burden provides useful information. During the 1980s ERTA had reduced personal tax rates by about 25 percent, while the Tax Reform Act of 1986 chopped them yet again.
High marginal tax rates discourage work effort, saving, and investment, and promote tax avoidance and tax evasion. A reduction in high marginal tax rates would boost long term economic growth, and reduce the attractiveness of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. The economic benefits of ERTA were summarized by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers in 1994: "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth." Unfortunately, the Council could not bring itself to acknowledge the counterproductive effects high marginal tax rates can have upon taxpayer behavior and tax avoidance activities.
Since 1984 the JEC has provided factual information about the impact of the tax cuts of the 1980s. For example, for many years the JEC has published IRS data on federal tax payments of the top 1 percent, top 5 percent, top 10 percent, and other taxpayers. These data show that after the high marginal tax rates of 1981 were cut, tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply. For example, in 1981 the top 1 percent paid 17.6 percent of all personal income taxes, but by 1988 their share had jumped to 27.5 percent, a 10 percentage point increase. The graph below illustrates changes in the tax burden during this period.
The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.
A middle class of taxpayers can be defined as those between the 50th percentile and the 95th percentile (those earning between $18,367 and $72,735 in 1988). Between 1981 and 1988, the income tax burden of the middle class declined from 57.5 percent in 1981 to 48.7 percent in 1988. This 8.8 percentage point decline in middle class tax burden is entirely accounted for by the increase borne by the top one percent.
Several conclusions follow from these data. First of all, reduction in high marginal tax rates can induce taxpayers to lessen their reliance on tax shelters and tax avoidance, and expose more of their income to taxation. The result in this case was a 51 percent increase in real tax payments by the top one percent. Meanwhile, the tax rate reduction reduced the tax payments of middle class and poor taxpayers. The net effect was a marked shift in the tax burden toward the top 1 percent amounting to about 10 percentage points. Lower top marginal tax rates had encouraged these taxpayers to generate more taxable income.
The 1993 Clinton tax increase appears to having the opposite effect on the willingness of wealthy taxpayers to expose income to taxation. According to IRS data, the income generated by the top one percent of income earners actually declined in 1993. This decline is especially significant since the retroactivity of the Clinton tax increase in that year limited the ability of taxpayers to deploy tax avoidance strategies, temporarily resulting in an increase in their tax burden. Moreover, according to the FY 1997 Clinton budget submission, individual income tax revenues as a share of GDP will be lower during the first four years of the Clinton tax increase, which include the effects of the 1990 tax increase, than under the last four years of the Reagan tax changes (FY 1986-89). Furthermore, according to a study published by the National Bureau for Economic Research,[2] the Clinton tax hike is failing to collect over 40 percent of the projected revenue increases.
Incidentally, the claim that unrealistic supply side Reagan Administration revenue projections caused large budget deficits during the 1980s is false. Nonetheless, this false allegation is often used against current tax reform proposals. The official Reagan revenue projections immediately following enactment of ERTA did not assume huge revenue increases, and were actually quite close to the CBO revenue projections. Even the Democrat-controlled CBO projected that deficits would fall after the enactment of the Reagan tax cuts. The real problem was a recession that neither CBO nor OMB could foresee. Even so, individual income tax revenues rose from $244 billion in 1980 to $446 billion in 1989.
The Reagan tax cuts, like similar measures enacted in the 1920s and 1960s, showed that reducing excessive tax rates stimulates growth, reduces tax avoidance, and can increase the amount and share of tax payments generated by the rich. High top tax rates can induce counterproductive behavior and suppress revenues, factors that are usually missed or understated in government static revenue analysis. Furthermore, the key assumption of static revenue analysis that economic growth is not affected by tax changes is disproved by the experience of previous tax reduction programs. There is little reason to expect static revenue analysis to evaluate the economic or distributional effects of current tax reform proposals much better than it evaluated the Reagan tax program 15 years ago.
1. Joint Economic Committee, The Mellon and Kennedy Tax Cuts: A Review and Analysis, 1982. 2. Feldstein, Martin and Daniel Feenberg, The Effect of Increased Tax Rates on Taxable Income and Economic Efficiency: A Preliminary Analysis of the 1993 Tax Rate Increases, NBER, 1995.Endnotes:
So when is anyone in this dangerous administration going to let these facts get in the way?
Thanks for a very good post.
Tony "taxes" the made men who are his Capos very precise amounts. $4,000 per month ~ and it doesn't matter what their income may be. He also charges penalties up front ~ if you're late one day he adds $2,000. If you don't pay that instantly, your base goes up and you pay everything you owe plus the next month you pay $6,000.
When he taps into a business (as a not so silent partner), he doesn't tax them with a percentage. No, he taxes them with a gross amount, and not just against the business but also potentially against other presumably separate corporate interests.
Tony's needs are paramount in the process. He has to play to deal with all his obligations so it's all upfront. You get shot or something, or go to jail, he relents, but when you come back he'll reinstate you with the same requirement, but his assignment of assets may leave you deficient ~ hence the need to expand the area of extortion.
They are always on the lookout for an addicted gambler. They share them like cattle ~ until finally it's time for a closeout on all their property.
Somebody knew these people pretty well.
The basic idea here is not as progressive as Feudalism where a peasant paid a percent of his crop. The Chicago plan, and the Soprano plan, think of taxes as a FIXED QUANTITY and they don't care if the economy collapses because of them. It's your job to deliver the stash.
We cannot allow Obama to continue to blame the banking meltdown on the Bush tax cuts.
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This study ignores taxes other than income. Why not a study on aggregate taxes - taxes are taxes are taxes.
This study ignores taxes other than income. Why not a study on aggregate taxes - taxes are taxes are taxes.
Focus: The study is in line with the debate of our day.
I disagree with you to this degree: the country WILL benefit from the Republicans taking the House and the Senate because this is the only way we have right now to try to stop the incredible damage being forced on the nation by Obama & Gang.
Once we stop the spread of the Obama cancer, then we can figure out how better to treat the disease.
This is not chopped liver.
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