Tag Archives: taxes

Tax Breaks, Taxes, and Congress

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Fox News niggles at the story.  Here’s a short list of tax breaks that are at risk of not being renewed (due to Democrats’ intransigence concerning cutting Federal spending, these tax “breaks” do increase the deficit), even though usually they are renewed early in the subsequent year:

  • tax credit for research and development: saving an estimated $6.2 billion in 2013
  • exemption that allows banks, insurance companies and other financial firms to shield foreign profits from being taxed by the US: saving an estimated $9.4 billion in 2013
  • break allowing profitable companies to write off large capital expenditures immediately, rather than over time: saving an estimated $34 billion in 2013
  • tax credit for producing renewable energy, including wind and solar, in plants built before the end of 2013: saving an estimated $116 million in 2013
  • provision that allows motorsport race tracks to more quickly write off improvement costs: saving an estimated $46 million in 2013.
  • tax break that allows TV and movie productions to more quickly write off expenses: saving an estimated $266 million in 2013.

And so on, for more than 50 such things.

Of course none of this would matter—and the associated lobbyists would be put out of work and have to find something useful to do, instead—in a régime of a low flat tax on all income of whatever source, with no deductions, exemptions, credits, what-have-you, that everyone pays.  And we’d have fewer market distortions from the social engineering folderol of the current tax policy.

Health Insurance Risk…Corridors

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These are insurance company premium income/payout cost bands written into Obamacare that are intended to smooth out the transition from a quasi-free market in health insurance to the government run health welfare program that is Obamacare.  Under this program, insurance companies that are too successful are punished for that success by being forced to disgorge some of their income in the form of a tax on the premiums they collect, which the Feds then transfer to insurance companies that couldn’t hack the new program, so they get government support.

Only some companies that are having trouble need not apply for the bailout support—they just get to pay the vig without the payoff.

The IRS collects an annual flat amount specified by the Affordable Care Act to be allocated among the insurers according to market share.

But….  IRS regulations published in November excluded “any entity that is a self-insured employer to the extent that such employer self-insures its employees’ health risks.”  Since about four of five employers with more than 500 workers and most union-negotiated health plans are self-insured, they are spared from the tax.  So is insurance on behalf of “government entities,” such as original Medicare (but not privately run Medicare Advantage).

[Thus]…the tax burden falls on the saps who work for small businesses, the self-employed and individuals—i.e., the people who can least afford it.

Worse,

this [tax] is not deductible for corporate income tax purposes.  In other words, health plans pay the tax and then federal and state taxes on the taxed amount.  [Ex-CBO director Doug] Holtz-Eakin estimates this unusual taxes-on-taxes rule means that the effect on premiums is 54% larger than the dollar amount of the tax itself.

Hmm….

Some Thoughts on the Ryan-Murray Budget Deal

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Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips has this one:

This budget compromise is not just bad policy, it is bad politics.  The American people remember hard-won bipartisan spending limits set by the sequester, and are not pleased to see their conservative representatives so easily go back on their word to rein in government over-spending.

The deal does, after all, increase spending to a skosh over $1 trillion (just about halfway to the Democrats’ spending call of $1.058 trillion from the current spending of $0.967 trillion), while increasing, slightly, defense spending (rather than the more draconian cut the sequester had scheduled for 2014) and increasing, slightly, discretionary spending—all paid for with spending cuts and fees elsewhere, with chump change left over for a net deficit reduction.  Yes, yes, this is a current increase in spending paid for with future cuts and fees.  See below.

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas has one, too:

The solution is not to walk away from progress and add over $60 billion in spending over the next two years.  We are not impressed by the cost cutting gimmicks and urge members of Congress to tell the budget conference to get back to work[.]

What’s your plan, guys on which the conference committee should “get back to work?”  With what votes, particularly in the Senate, do you claim your alternative (you do have something more intelligent than just “No,” yes?) can pass?

Certainly, there’s much to dislike in this compromise, but it’s good enough for the next year (albeit it covers the next two).  More importantly, blocking it is tactically stupid: it moves the focus in an election year to Republican intransigence, whether that’s a fair perception or not.

I have one, also.  Take the deal, lose the distraction.  Keep the election year focus on the failed Obamacare, on the anti-business Dodd-Frank, on the Democrats’ tax and spend demands, on the Democrats’ blowup of the Senate (picking any two (so long as one is Obamacare) in order to have that focus).  Win elections, then do the budgets that are necessary, repeal Obamacare (you do have a replacement plan ready to proffer, yes?), eliminate the CFPB, and so on with the votes to do so actually present in the House and in the Senate.

Quit being chuckleheads.  Quit being the Party of Stupid.

Farm Subsidies and False Premises

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Negotiators [on a proposed milk price support bill] are…working out how farm subsidies should be restructured in the absence of a traditional subsidy called direct payments, which are paid to farmer regardless of crop price or crop yield.  Both chambers’ bills would eliminate this $5 billion annual subsidy in response to critics who say it pays farmers not to farm.  But they have argued over how to replace those payments, with major farm groups squabbling over whether subsidies should kick in based on crop prices or farmer revenue, and how to count the acreage on which the subsidies are based.

Unfortunately for our pocketbooks, those negotiators are operating from a false premise: that the subsidies need to be revised in any way.  The only ones who benefit from these subsidies in any large way are the large agribusinesses and the “farm state” politicians supported by them.  Mom and pop farms?  Not so much.  On top of that, though, us food eaters are materially harmed by the subsidies through the artificially inflated prices we have to pay for food that those subsidies create.  And the poor among us are harmed the most by those inflated prices.  Additionally, us taxpayers are harmed a second—and third—time by having to pay for those subsidies that are driving our prices up and by having to pay for the food stamps that are used to mitigate for the poor those artificially inflated prices.

No.  The subsidies need to be done away with: “replace” them altogether through a bill that eliminates all of the farm subsidies, which ding us for $25 billion annually.  That seed then lets the much larger $80 billion/yr food stamp program to be drastically reduced, if not eliminated altogether, since most of those remaining who truly need help would generally be within the resources of their local communities and states.

Another Failure of Modern Liberalism

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Illinois has a deeply bankrupt pension system—it’s in the hole by $100 billion: a state is in the hole by $100 billion, not a nation—a pension system that’s the worst off in the country.

Their solution?  A bill just passed that in total is claimed to save $160 billion over 30 years and fully fund the systems by 2044.  That’s a bit over $5 billion a year on that $100 billion arrearage.  And it naively, if not cynically, assumes that future state legislatures won’t change the thing for all of those 30 years.

Some specifics, with my comments: the bill

  • pushes back the retirement age for workers ages 45 and younger, on a sliding scale

Why a scale?  20 years to a nominal retirement at 65 is plenty of time for workers to adjust plans.

  • replaces annual 3% cost-of-living increases for retirees with a system that provides the increases on a portion of benefits, based on seniority

Why freeze the COL?  If there’s to be one, why not tie it to inflation?  Today’s inflation is in the neighborhood of 2%-2.5%. Larger COLs aren’t necessary.

  • gives some workers the option of freezing their pension and starting a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan

Why only some?  Why not move them all to 401(k) type plans?  The private sector recognized the usefulness of such plans decades ago, and they make the workers more responsible for their own futures, instead of having government usurp that responsibility.

  • has workers contributing 1% less to their own retirement

So workers will become even less responsible for their own futures than they were.  Oh, wait—those plans….

Don’t expect this to have any effect on Illinois’ failed system other than to allow it to get worse.