SmartMoney - The Wall Street Journal

Income Tax Rates Hit Small Businesses Much Harder

Regarding your editorial "How Much the Rich Pay" (Jan. 20): Most of the comments regarding taxes on the rich have focused on what happens when shareholders of a C corporation pay taxes on dividends. However, I have not seen any comments on ...

VAT Could Be a Threat or a Vehicle for Real Tax Reform

Regarding Daniel J. Mitchell's "Will Republicans Hand the Left a VAT Victory?" (op-ed, Jan. 4): All taxes result in additional costs for something that thus make that product or service less desirable than it would be without the added tax. ...

U.S. Income 'Tax Gap' Widens

The Internal Revenue Service estimated that Americans underpaid their taxes by $385 billion for tax year 2006 in its latest report on the nation's "tax gap"—an estimate of taxes owed but not paid.

Unleash Prosperity With a Zero Corporate Income Tax

In your Nov. 7 editorial "The Corporate Welfare State," you say that a "big rate cut would generate far more jobs and wealth than passing out checks to businesses one at a time." Why not propose that big rate cut be really big? Why not take ...

The Tax Guy's Tax Plan; Could decreasing the frequency of federal income tax payments alter how government spends?

Consider these two points. Over 80% of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes and Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes. Most of that money is collected via automatic payroll tax withholding

A Tax Code for Tomorrow; We need to encourage investment, not penalize it.

From the City Journal Warren Buffett is worried that he doesn't pay enough in taxes. In an August op-ed in the New York Times, the billionaire pointed out that his effective federal tax rate—the percentage of all his income that he paid in ...

Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Gets a Closer Look; Liberals Say '9-9-9' Proposal Will Hurt Poor; Conservatives Criticize Sales Levy

Herman Cain's surge in the polls is focusing new attention on his "9-9-9" tax plan, but also raising new questions about whether it does everything it claims.

My Tax and Spending Reform Plan; Individuals will have the option of paying a 20% flat-rate income tax and I'll cap spending at 18% of GDP.

The folks in Washington might not like to hear it, but the plain truth is the U.S. government spends too much. Taxes are too high, too complex, and too riddled with special interest loopholes. And our expensive entitlement system is ...

The Buffett Alternative Tax; The rich don't pay lower average tax rates.

Washington has repeated nearly every economic policy mistake of the 1930s in recent years, so why not repeat one of the bigger blunders of the 1960s too? We refer to President Obama's proposal yesterday for a new "Buffett Rule" to raise ...

Sales Tax Evasion Versus the Income Tax

Sharon Kristjanson claims (Letters, Oct. 5), regarding the national sales tax proposed under Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, that the proliferation of a black market will negate much potential revenue collected under this new sales tax. It is ...

Flat Is the New Fair; Is President Obama paving the way for GOP tax reform?

'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has ...

The GOP Candidates Square Off on Taxes; The proposals range from modest to bold. All include lower rates, which will stimulate growth.

The 2012 election is shaping up as a historic confrontation over the proper size and scope of government spending, taxes, deficits and debt. After three years of the Obama presidency, the Republican presidential candidates are offering ...

A Short History of the Income Tax; One original sin was the separation of the corporate and personal tax, giving lawyers, accountants and the wealthy a chance to game the system.

Whether the "millionaires and billionaires" are actually paying their fair share of taxes is a matter for the electorate to decide. After all, fairness is hardly an objective standard.

Tax Tips for Harvey Golub (and Other Millionaires); The former CEO says he is paying more than 80% in taxes. We can fix that, writes Brett Arends.

Hey, Harvey Golub -- I'm sorry to hear about your tax problems! In a rebuttal to Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on the super-rich, you wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal: "Of my current income this year, I ...

A Value-Added Tax Fuels Big Government; In Europe the VAT hasn't substituted for income taxation. It's merely added to the tax burden.

President Obama is now talking about a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction that includes a "revenue component" achieved by "tax reform."

Class War Stories; A transcript of the weekend's program on FOX News Channel.

Paul Gigot: This week on "The Journal Editorial Report," the banker baiters are back. As those Wall Street protests grow, Democrats jump on the bandwagon, railing against banks and the fees that the politicians helped create. Plus, Chris ...

Four Things You Can Still Do to Lower Your 2010 Tax Bill

Although 2010 is in your rearview mirror, it's not too late to make some moves that will save taxes on last year's Form 1040--and maybe on your state income tax return as well. Here are four possibilities.

Why Canada Is Beating America; It shrank government, and now unemployment and debt are declining.

While the U.S. remains mired in debt and slogs through a subpar economic recovery, Canada is moving ahead steadily. Its unemployment rate peaked at a little over 8.5% and is now 7.4%, and there were no bank bailouts. Real GDP growth is ...

Mailbag

Regulatory Gap To the Editor: We can only grimace at the plight of regulators as featured in Jim McTague's D.C. Current column ("Don't Count on the SEC," Feb. 7) in which he elucidates congressional failure to adequately ...

Boeing and the Union Berlin Wall; Between 2000 and 2008, 4.8 million Americans moved from forced union states to right-to-work states—that's one person every minute of every day.

The Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint last month against Boeing to block production of the company's 787 Dreamliner at a new assembly plant in South Carolina—a "right to-work" state ...

Warren Buffett Is Wrong On Taxes; Millionaires and billionaires pay a higher share of their income in taxes than the middle class.

The Oracle of Omaha is at it again. On July 7, Warren Buffett told Bloomberg: "I think the rich have a responsibility to pay higher tax rates." Then he groused that his wealthy friends are "paying lower tax rates than the ...

High-Earning Households Pay Growing Share of Taxes

As President Barack Obama pushes to raise income taxes on high earners, opponents are seizing on data that indicates these U.S. households already pay a large and growing share of taxes, even compared with high-tax European countries. And a ...

Michigan Legislature Passes New Tax Plan With Flat Corporate Tax

DETROIT—Michigan's state legislature Thursday passed a broad new tax structure ending a raft of tax credits, replacing the state's complex business tax with a flat corporate tax, while imposing a new pension tax and raising income ...

Why 70% Tax Rates Won't Work; Memo to Robert Reich: The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest rate was 28%.

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a ...

Roth IRA Conversions: Still Smart? Here's what you need to know about the Roth option now

Last year was the perfect storm for converting traditional IRAs into Roth accounts. Previous restrictions on conversions were removed, and you could spread the taxable income triggered by a 2010 conversion evenly over 2011 and 2012. What ...

Raising Income Tax Rates Won't Hit the Warren Buffetts

Stephen Moore is right (" Warren Buffett Is Wrong on Taxes ," op-ed, July 28). Mr. Buffett argues that billionaires like him should be paying more in taxes. Therefore, Congress should raise the income tax rate. He makes this ...

A 62% Top Tax Rate? Democrats have said they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. In reality they're proposing rates like those under President Carter.

Media reports in recent weeks say that Senate Democrats are considering a 3% surtax on income over $1 million to raise federal revenues. This would come on top of the higher income tax rates that President Obama has already proposed through ...

7 Tax Tips for Your 2010 Return

It's already March: time to get serious about filing your 2010 Form 1040 -- especially if you expect a refund. Here are several often overlooked tax-saving tips that could make your refund bigger or cut what you owe.

State Tax Collections Tick Up; While Higher Levies Help Refill Capital Coffers, Cities Face Weakening Revenue

State tax collections continued to click up in January and February, thanks in part to tax increases, but remain well below their previous peak.

States Retain Business Levies

Governors trying to cut business taxes are running into unexpected resistance from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed changes to Michigan's tax code that would reduce corporate income taxes by $1 ...

Reaganomics: What We Learned; From December 1982 to June 1990, Reaganomics created over 21 million jobs. The right policies can do it again.

For 16 years prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin—a result of bipartisan ignorance that resulted in tax increases, dollar devaluations, wage and price controls, minimum-wage hikes, misguided spending, ...

Financial Aid and Taxes: What You Owe

Costs to attend some colleges are approaching astronomical levels. For top-rated private universities, the annual hit can be $50,000 or higher. Some public schools charge out-of-state students $35,000 or more.

Soaking the Wealthy: An American Tradition; From carriages and snuff to millionaires' income, two centuries of targets

Americans like to tax the rich. As a nation, we rely more on progressive taxes—and less on regressive ones—than any other developed country. We impose no broad-based consumption tax, standing firm against the global popularity of ...

Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse; Today's corporate profits reflect an income shift into 2010. These profits will tumble next year, preceded most likely by the stock market.

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.

U.S. Effective Corporate Tax Rate on New Investments: Highest in the OECD; The U.S. corporate tax system has become unwieldy, inconsistent with world practice, and highly anti-competitive.

From the Cato Institute The U.S. corporate tax system has become unwieldy, inconsistent with world practice, and highly anti-competitive. The statutory corporate income tax rate is one of the highest in the world at about 40 percent, which ...

Paladino Turns to Policy

Carl Paladino says he wants to put a muzzle on personal attacks and concentrate his campaign for governor around policy ideas. The Republican candidate is trying out a more buttoned-down approach this week after causing an uproar Wednesday ...

Hillary Clinton: Accidental Supply-Sider; She's right about Brazil's growth. She's wrong about its tax rates.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared recently at the Brookings Institution, "The rich are not paying their fair share." She then went on to praise Brazil as the tax holy grail for the rest of the world: "Brazil has the ...

Will the VAT Lady Sing? If so, it's over for America.

A cultural battle is under way in America, a battle between, in columnist Michael Barone's, words, "the culture of dependence and the culture of independence."

Gregg, Wyden Offer Plan to Simplify U.S. Tax Code

WASHINGTON—Two senators Tuesday introduced a proposal to vastly simplify the nation's tax code by cutting the number of income tax brackets in half and flattening the corporate tax rate.

Who Doesn't Pay Taxes and Why

For the 2009 tax year, an estimated 47% of U.S. households did not pay any federal income tax. The percentage was a bit higher than normal due to the lousy economy and some allegedly temporary tax breaks that may not be renewed. The ...

Extend the Bush Tax Cuts—For Now; Deficits are a real problem but the recovery is still too fragile to choke off growth with higher rates.

This is not the time for a tax increase. But unless Congress acts, under current law the existing income tax rates will rise sharply at the beginning of next year. Congress should vote now to extend all of the current tax rates for two ...

Maryland's Mobile Millionaires; Income tax rates go up, rich taxpayers vanish.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is the latest Democrat to demand a tax increase, this week proposing to raise the state's top marginal individual income tax rate to 4% from 3%. He'd better hope this works out better than it has for ...

Death tax is income tax; Commentary: Debate over taxing the dead is heating up

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Death tax. The term itself is controversial. Critics say it's wrong to call it that. It's an estate tax, they say.

Liberal Tax Revolt; Some Democrats decide they prefer lower rates. Obama isn't one of them.

There's nothing like the prospect of an electoral rout to concentrate the incumbent mind, and so all of a sudden rank-and-file Democrats in Congress are saying maybe they shouldn't let the 2003 tax rates expire after all. Now if ...

Europe's VAT Lessons; Rates start low and increase, while income tax rates stay high.

As Americans rush to complete their annual tax returns today, there is still some consolation in knowing that it could be worse: Like Europeans, we could pay both income taxes and a value-added tax, or VAT. And maybe we soon will. Paul ...

Corporate Tax System Flawed, Report Says

WASHINGTON—The U.S. corporate tax system is "deeply flawed and in need of reform," according to a report released Friday by an advisory panel to the White House led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Tax Literacy 101

If you’re a SmartMoney regular, I’m pretty sure your overall financial literacy is good. However, your tax literacy may need some work. With the November election approaching, it’s a good time to get up to speed. Here’s the first of several ...

Echoes of the Great Depression; As in the 1930s, policy uncertainty and hostility to business have retarded recovery. At least this time around the political price for economic failure promises to be swift.

This may not be your grandfather's Great Depression, but many aspects of today's situation would remind him of the 1930s. If the recession that officially ended a year ago feels uncomfortably surreal to you yet familiar to him, ...

When a Job Ends, Pay Taxes Now or Roll Over?

Taxpayers receiving a qualified retirement-plan payout after their retirement, termination or job change face a big question: Should they postpone paying taxes by arranging for a tax-free rollover of their retirement-plan balance into a ...

Washington State's Union Tax; Bill Gates Sr. supports a state income tax on wealthy Washingtonians, but public unions are the real muscle behind the initiative.

In Washington state, the fight over a proposed new income tax has been cast as a battle of the billionaires. In this narrative, the struggle is between wealthy people who believe in paying their fair share of taxes—and other wealthy people ...

India in Photos; Protest in Srinagar, Income Tax officials raid offices of Indian Premier League teams, World Earth Day and much more.

Corporate Income Tax Alternatives

Michael J. Boskin is so right about corporate taxes. ("Time to Junk the Corporate Tax," op-ed, May 6.) What he fails to address, though, is the fact that Congress is full of lawyers, not businessmen. What I really want to hear is ...

The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle—workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed ...

The Bill Gates Income Tax; If Washington's most famous billionaires are really worried about their state's finances, they'd write personal checks to the government and leave everyone else alone.

Framed on a wall in my office is a personal letter to me from Bill Gates the elder. "I am a fan of progressive taxation," he wrote. "I would say our country has prospered from using such a system—even at 70% rates to say ...

Empire of Excess; New York is in for more economic trouble.

From the City Journal Advocates of the misnamed "millionaire's tax" enacted in New York State last year claimed that it would restore "fairness" to a tax code that favored the rich. After all, the statewide ...

There's No Escaping Hauser's Law; Tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised. Better to cut rates and get 19% of a larger pie.

Even amoebas learn by trial and error, but some economists and politicians do not. The Obama administration's budget projections claim that raising taxes on the top 2% of taxpayers, those individuals earning more than $200,000 and ...

Irish Government Takes a Hit; Prime Minister Promises to Call Early Election as Coalition Weakens Amid Turmoil Over Bailout

Ireland's financial crisis morphed into political turmoil Monday, as the country's coalition government began to unravel in the wake of an unpopular international bailout and Prime Minister Brian Cowen pledged to call an election ...

The Tax Compromise Doesn't Please the Left or Right

Your editorial "Obamanomics Takes a Holiday" (Dec. 8) makes two important points in showing that the Obama-Republican tax compromise will not be a stimulative panacea. The two-year extension limit leaves in place the policy ...

Local Revenues Climb as Economy Recovers

State and local tax revenues continue to recover as the economy improves, but remain below pre-recession peaks and are likely to face continued pressure in 2011.