Barring some last minute deal it seems America is going over the “fiscal cliff.” Which given the perverted incentives of Washington may be just what some people are longing for: For many Republicans, a cliff dive means blaming President Barack Obama for a big tax hike in the short term and then voting to cut [...]

House Speaker John Boehner’s latest offer sheet to the President in the fiscal slope negotiations includes an increase in tax rates on people earning $1 million a year, the first time that the Republican leader has proposed any tax rate hike. The White House, seeking rises on tax rates above $250,000, rejected the offer. Boehner [...]

A group of very rich Americans, including Warren Buffet, George Soros, the father of Bill Gates, the grand-daughter of Roy Disney and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, have released a statement arguing for a higher estate tax than even the Obama Administration has endorsed, showing that there’s a constituency to press for higher taxes on [...]

Some skullduggery on the Senate floor today. If I can piece together what happened, Mitch McConnell up and requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan – the initial offer that the White House made to avert the fiscal slope. And Harry Reid, calling it a “stunt,” objected to the UC request. [...]

We talked about the Republicans’ doomsday plan, where they would pass the extension of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income, allow the cut to tax rates above that to expire, and live to fight another day with more leverage. With talks at an impasse, and the President more aggressive specifically on [...]

In the context of doing a deficit reduction deal at all, this is an extremely strong bid that Tim Geithner delivered to John Boehner today. Now we know why Boehner whined and cried all afternoon. Let’s walk through it. House Republicans said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John [...]

There are so many moving parts to the expiring measures due at the end of the year that it’s often hard to assess them all. Republicans like to frame them solely as about taxes, which is untrue – the sequester and the change to Medicare reimbursement rates and the extended unemployment benefits make up a [...]

Try as they might to shift to the economy, something always gets in the way for the Romney campaign. In this case, it’s the actions of Mitt Romney throughout his life to wall off his fortune from the Internal Revenue Service and ensure a continuing Romney aristocracy for the next generation. First, even by what [...]

One problem with talking about the “Bush tax cuts” is that they incorporate much more than just the individual income tax marginal rates. Among other things, you have the changes to the estate tax. And so today, House Democrats plan to introduce an estate tax measure that would freeze the tax at 2009 levels. In [...]

In a move that really tells you who runs Washington, Senate Democrats backed down on a portion of their tax package, one that they already know won’t pass into law after it comes up for a vote next week. Despite this, instead of putting forward a tax package that conforms with what they presume to [...]

$28 billion. That’s the difference, in 2013, between the Democratic and Republican tax plans on the Bush tax cuts, which shows the narrowness of the debate. Republicans want to extend all the Bush tax cuts permanently. Democrats have countered with a bill, which will get a vote in the Senate next week, that would extend [...]