Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| IRS Data Shows that Businesses Will Bear Brunt of Obama's Tax Hike Hiking the top individual income tax rates would amount to one of the largest single tax increases on individually owned businesses in modern history... |
| Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force States' sources of revenue are increasingly volatile because of their growing reliance on sales taxes, which are vulnerable to fluctuations in the business cycle... |
| Overpaid Unemployment Benefits Top $14 Billion The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in unemployment benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11 percent of all the jobless benefits paid out... |
| UCLA Study of Japan's Bullet Train Raises Questions about California Project A recent economic analysis found no evidence that the introduction of bullet train service in Japan improved tax revenues, which was used as a proxy for local gross domestic product... |
| Firms Pass up Tax Breaks, Citing Hassles, Complexity Tax consultants estimate that eligible businesses obtain as little as 5 percent of the main domestic tax breaks that they are entitled to claim... |
| The $250,000 Threshold: How Does It Work? When President Obama talks about letting the Bush tax cuts expire for families earning over $250,000 and single filers earning over $200,000, he really means $267,000 and $213,600, respectively... |
| Would a Financial Transaction Tax Affect Financial Market Activity? A transaction tax on financial markets threatens to distort decision-making in buying and selling situations, and could also simply result in the exportation of financial markets... |
| Institutions and State Spending Separate spending and taxing committees limit legislators' ability to increase revenues for niche expenditures, and was found to result in $1,241 less in per capita spending... |
| Is U.S. Transportation Infrastructure Falling Down? In 2002, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority estimated that it needed $12.2 billion -- roughly the original cost of constructing the rail system -- to rehabilitate its rail lines... |
| Burning Fast In 2010, 34 state pension funds were funded at below 80 percent -- a figure that is up from 22 in 2008... |
