Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| It Is Time to Make the R&D Tax Credit Permanent Increasing the alternative simplified research and development tax credit, combined with the regular research credit under current law, would increase R&D spending by $23 billion to $53 billion, say Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow, and Brian Bodine, a graduate student fellow, with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| State and Local Pension Plans: Funding Status, Asset Management and a Look Ahead Governmental Accounting Standards Board accounting standards may be inducing plan managers to assume unwarranted risks by heavily weighting plan investments toward equities and real estate securities and promoting liability mismeasurement... |
| We're Already Europe This year, the United States' budget deficit will equal 8.7 percent of gross domestic product; only two European countries, Greece and Ireland, have larger budget deficits as a percentage of GDP... |
| Obama's Dividend Assault Under President Obama's proposed 2013 budget, the dividend tax rate would be 44.8 percent -- nearly three times today's 15 percent rate... |
| Fifty Percent Tax Rate Failing to Boost Revenues Lower income tax payments will add to pressure on Britain's Coalition government to drop a new 50 percent rate amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad... |
| The Fiscal Health of the States State and local expenditures have grown from roughly 8 percent of gross domestic product in 1962 to more than 14 percent in 2008... |
| The Upside of Government Default State defaults in the mid-1840s encouraged states to restructure and reform to a degree that would likely not have been possible without the traumatic event of default... |
| How Not to Make Public Policy: The Payroll Tax Cut The payroll tax holiday irreparably damages the financial strength of the Social Security Trust Fund; the holiday reduced Social Security tax income by $105 billion in 2011 alone... |
| State and Local Sales Taxes in 2012 The five states with the highest combined state and local tax rates are Tennessee (9.45 percent), Arizona (9.12 percent), Louisiana (8.85 percent), Washington (8.80 percent) and Oklahoma (8.66 percent)... |
| Fighting the Major Diseases of Africa A report estimates that $19 million was allocated globally for fighting malaria in 1999, but by 2002 the figure had reached $418.5 million and increased by another $1.4 billion by 2009... |
