Skip to content

More Thoughts on the Fiscal Cliff Deal

5 min readBy: Scott Hodge

Like everyone in Washington, TaxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. Foundation staff has been musing over the last-minute deal struck to avoid the full effects of the Fiscal Cliff. Here are some of our thoughts:

It undermines economic growth: On a purely economic level, the deal is a Pyrrhic Victory for America. As our analysis showed, while the deal saved us from going over the Fiscal Cliff, the compromise will undermine long-term economic growth. Moreover, it will lower wages and business investment which means that it will not raise as much new tax revenues as is predicted – about two-thirds less in fact. We find that for every new dollar of revenues that the plan will raise, it will lower GDP by $8.50. That’s a pretty bad deal for the economy.

All taxpayers pay a price: When the tax bill is measured on a purely static basis, it hits only high-income Americans as advertised. However, when we take into account the economic effects on other taxpayers, everyone will suffer lower after-tax incomes as a result – about 1.4% lower incomes for the poor and middle-class. (Our distributional tables here).

The Obama tax code: The deal ends the era of the “Bush Tax Cuts.” The tax code is now President Obama’s and he owns all of its effects, for better or worse. One good aspect of the deal is that it made most of the tax code permanent (except for the “extenders” of course). One immediate benefit is that we now have certainty over the revenue baseline, which means that there will be a common vocabulary over what is a tax cut and what is a tax increase. We will also have more clarity over what the actual deficit projections are and what is causing them – spending or revenues.

Lots of added complexity: The deal violates almost all of the principles of sound tax policy that we hold dear. The deal reinstated the limitations on personal exemptions and itemized deductionItemized deductions allow individuals to subtract designated expenses from their taxable income and can be claimed in lieu of the standard deduction. Itemized deductions include those for state and local taxes, charitable contributions, and mortgage interest. An estimated 13.7 percent of filers itemized in 2019, most being high-income taxpayers. s known as the Personal Exemption Phase-Out (PEP) and the Pease provision. The intent of these provisions is to limit write-offs for high-income taxpayers, which is what the Alternative Minimum Tax was also supposed to do.

The deal also adds another tax bracketA tax bracket is the range of incomes taxed at given rates, which typically differ depending on filing status. In a progressive individual or corporate income tax system, rates rise as income increases. There are seven federal individual income tax brackets; the federal corporate income tax system is flat. to the code, increasing the number of brackets to seven from the current level of six. This is a far cry from the two brackets that were in place between 1988 and 1990, and takes us back to the pre-1986 days when there were 15 brackets. The deal also added a third 20 percent bracket to capital gains and dividends (the rates are now 0%, 15%, and 20%). For some high-income taxpayers, the top rates are actually 18.8% and 23.8% when the Obamacare surtaxA surtax is an additional tax levied on top of an already existing business or individual tax and can have a flat or progressive rate structure. Surtaxes are typically enacted to fund a specific program or initiative, whereas revenue from broader-based taxes, like the individual income tax, typically cover a multitude of programs and services. is included.

What about growth? President Obama can declare victory in his effort to make the tax code more progressive. But it is well known that there is a tradeoff between progressivity and economic growth. As our model shows, the tax hike will slow economic growth. So what is going to be done to grow the economy? Tax reform was to be the vehicle for growing the economy, but…

A setback for tax reform: The deal is clearly a setback for fundamental tax reform. Since the goal of pro-growth tax reform is to broaden the tax baseThe tax base is the total amount of income, property, assets, consumption, transactions, or other economic activity subject to taxation by a tax authority. A narrow tax base is non-neutral and inefficient. A broad tax base reduces tax administration costs and allows more revenue to be raised at lower rates. while lowering tax rates, this will be more difficult to achieve now that the top rate has been boosted to Clinton-era levels and all of the worst elements of the current system (such as refundable tax creditA refundable tax credit can be used to generate a federal tax refund larger than the amount of tax paid throughout the year. In other words, a refundable tax credit creates the possibility of a negative federal tax liability. An example of a refundable tax credit is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). s) have been left in place.

So what now? Since it is likely that the new taxes on the rich will fail to provide enough new revenue to make a meaningful dent in the deficit, our guess is that tax reform becomes a vehicle for raising the revenues that Obama and the Democrats failed to get in the Fiscal Cliff deal. The definition for what constitutes “tax reform” will be altered to be about closing loopholes and broadening the tax base, and not about lowering tax rates or wringing the dead-weight losses out of the tax system.

Perhaps we will even begin to see some renewed calls for a carbon taxA carbon tax is levied on the carbon content of fossil fuels. The term can also refer to taxing other types of greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane. A carbon tax puts a price on those emissions to encourage consumers, businesses, and governments to produce less of them. or Value Added Tax.

Nonpayers: The deal leaves in place all of the various tax creditA tax credit is a provision that reduces a taxpayer’s final tax bill, dollar-for-dollar. A tax credit differs from deductions and exemptions, which reduce taxable income, rather than the taxpayer’s tax bill directly. s that have knocked a record 58 million Americans off of the tax rolls. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate of the bill, the refundable “outlay effects” of the various measures in the bill (such as the Earned Income Credit, Child Credit, American Opportunity Credit) total $276.5 billion over the next ten years.

Including the non-filers, roughly half of all households pay no income taxes and many of these households benefit from the more than $100 billion in refundable credits that are currently dispensed each year by the IRS to those who own no income taxes. The nonpayer issue will remain a serious problem for years to come.

Inequality: Despite the boost in top tax rates, inequality will continue to grow in America. That is because the tax system has little to do with the current level of inequality. Disparities in educational attainment are having a much bigger effect on inequality and the higher tax rates will not substantially reduce the economic returns from higher education. Our question is, what will the White House say when their tax increase fails to stem the rise in inequality? Our guess is that issue of inequality falls off the radar screen for the next couple of years.

Corporate tax reform: We’re not sure how the deal effects the movement corporate tax reform. Nothing in the deal changes the fact that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world and has an obsolete “worldwide” corporate tax system that is undermining American competitiveness. The deal does, however, create a disparity in the marginal rates in which business forms are taxed. While we are big proponents of cutting the corporate tax rate, we worry about having too big of a disparity between the rates paid by corporate and non-corporate businesses. We certainly don’t need to be reminded of the double-tax on corporate income, but we still think it would be a problem if the tax rate for S-corporations and LLCs was stuck at 39.6%, while the rate for multi-national C-corporations was lowered to say 28% as some have suggested.

No doubt, we will be struck with other thoughts about the deal as time passes. We’ll post those as we digest the full impact of the legislation.

Share