Author Archive
Jul
19
Philanthropy and the Estate Tax
Posted by: | CommentsThis year’s estate tax hiatus should have caused the same sort of fuss. Why? With no estate tax in 2010, people have less incentive to leave charitable bequests. In 2009, when estates worth more than $3.5 million faced a 45 percent tax rate, giving away a dollar cost only 55 cents after taxes because such bequests are deductible and thus reduce the taxable estate. This year, with no estate tax and thus no tax savings, that cost nearly doubled to a full dollar.
Estimates of how such a price rise would affect giving vary widely. With the 55 percent top tax rate in effect before 2001, economists estimated that eliminating the tax would cut giving by anywhere from 12 percent to 37 percent. Using the lower value, having no estate tax might cut giving by nearly $3 billion (based on $23 billion of charitable bequests in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available). That may be just a third of the reduction that the president’s proposal would cause—and it would occur only this year, not every year—but it’s still not chump change. At the same time, the estimate could vastly overstate the actual effects. The estimated responses assume permanent elimination of the tax, not just a one-year pause. For lots of reasons, people might respond a lot less.
So why do we hear no clamor to reinstate the tax today? Perhaps philanthropies are banking on the scheduled resurrection of the tax next year at pre-2001 levels—a 55 percent top tax rate on estates over $1 million, which would boost the incentive to give above what it was last year. Maybe they think uncertainty over the tax this year—Congress could restore it retroactively—will keep people from changing their planned giving. Perhaps they’re counting on inertia: people may be slow to change their wills to match tax laws and may not react at all to a temporary elimination of the tax. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because complaining means calling for a tax increase and not a tax cut. That stance would not appeal to big givers with high incomes.
And, of course, no one ever said political arguments must be consistent.
Jun
30
Flaky Debt Reduction
Posted by: | CommentsCarrying on a nearly two-decades-old tradition, the two GOP legislators have introduced the “Debt Buy-Down Act,” which would let taxpayers designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax liability for debt reduction. Congress would have to cut specific programs by the aggregate amount of designated taxes or accept an across-the-board spending reduction.
McCain and Flake say their goal is to rein in federal spending and reduce the national debt. But it is little more than “feel good” legislation that abdicates Congress’s fiscal responsibility. The bill effectively says, “We in Congress can’t control spending so we’ll let taxpayers force us to reduce the debt.”
In today’s tea party environment, that approach may prove to be good politics but it’s a poor way to govern. A similar bill was first introduced in 1992; it went nowhere and more recent successors have met with similar fates. This incarnation should do the same.
Perhaps the bill’s biggest flaw, however, is that it would do nothing to stop Congress from increasing spending and running the debt up further. The bill would merely require Congress to reduce spending from whatever level it enacted. Thus, taxpayers could designate $1 billion to reduce the debt while Congress boosts spending by $10 billion.
Besides, why stop at 10 percent, and why limit taxpayer input to revenues? If Congress really wants to give taxpayers more say in the budget process, it should let people direct which specific spending cuts will offset the taxes they designate under the proposal. And why stop there? We could follow California’s lead and make spending and tax decisions by referendum. Let the people decide. It has worked so well in the Golden State.
The proper approach, of course, is for Congress to make its own budget decisions and stop trying to duck its responsibilities.
May
19