Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| The Fiscal Cliff Deal Does Not Limit Itemized Deductions Under the new fiscal cliff deal, the incentive for high-income earners to donate to charity will increase as the tax reward rises from 35 percent to 39.6 percent on each dollar... |
| Three Myths about Government Default Congress has no legal or constitutional responsibility to cover the bill for entitlements... |
| Low-Income Workers Suffer High Effective Marginal Tax Rates Each additional dollar low-income workers earn between $5,000 and $20,000 brings only an additional $0.15 in disposable income, which amounts to a marginal tax rate of 85 percent... |
| Effects of Marriage on Tax Burden Vary Greatly with Income Level, Equality For a low-income couple where each spouse earns $7,500, filing a joint return results in a $620 marriage penalty because the Earned Income Tax Credit decreases substantially as the total taxable income increases... |
| Revenue-Based Financing for Our Crumbling Infrastructure System Federal grants bring stipulations that raise the costs of building projects substantially, like paying prevailing local wages... |
| Gasoline Taxes and Tolls Pay for Only a Third of State & Local Road Spending Nationwide in 2010, state and local governments raised $37 billion in motor fuel taxes and $12 billion in tolls and non-fuel taxes, but spent $155 billion on highways... |
| CEOs Call for Raising Retirement Age to 70 for Social Security, Medicare A group of CEOs is pushing a plan to gradually increase the full retirement age to 70 for both Social Security and Medicare, and to partially privatize Medicare... |
| The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction Is Inefficient For a household in the $40,000 to $50,000 income bracket, the average tax savings from the mortgage interest deduction amounted to only $111 in 2011; for households earning above $200,000, the average tax savings amounted to $1,784... |
| High Taxes Penalize Working Wives For married upper-income women, the new tax law will create a top tax rate of roughly 42 percent plus state and local taxes for a total tax rate of more than 50 percent... |
| Social Security: It's Worse Than You Think The Social Security Administration underestimates how long Americans will live and how much the trust funds will need to pay out -- to the tune of $800 billion by 2031... |
