http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/business/yourtaxes/08lede.html
The New York Times
February 8, 2009
Changes, Up and Down the Ladder
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON
AT least for the next year or so, nearly every household with an income
below $500,000 is likely to get at least a tiny tax cut.
But as President Obama and Congress wrestle with an economic crisis and
the legacy of the Bush tax cuts, the most far-reaching changes may be
in how much people pay the government but in how much the government
pays to people near the bottom.
Having criticized President George W. Bush for years about showering
the wealthiest Americans with tax breaks, Mr. Obama and Democratic
leaders are using a seemingly obscure concept -- the "refundable tax
credit" -- to put money directly into the hands of people at the middle
and bottom rungs of the income ladder.
The idea, not itself new, is to offer credits that can leave people
with extra money even if they didn't earn enough to owe federal income
taxes. About 57 million Americans have no tax liability.
The idea is not without controversy. Republican lawmakers have
generally opposed refundable tax credits, arguing that people should
not receive tax refunds if they did not pay income taxes in the first
place. To Republicans, the credits look like a backdoor way of
expanding welfare. But the idea is wildly popular with Democrats, who
see it as a way to shift income from the rich to the poor directly
through the tax system.
More than a year before he was elected president, Mr. Obama laid out a
surprisingly detailed plan aimed at shifting more of the tax burden
from middle-income families to those at the very top.
His plan called for reversing the Bush tax cuts for families with
incomes of more than $200,000, a move that would have meant
particularly steep increases for the tiny sliver of taxpayers earning
millions of dollars a year.
Though that is still part of Mr. Obama's blueprint, the deepening
recession and soaring unemployment rate have made the administration
nervous about raising taxes on anyone.
But the crisis has, if anything, accelerated the introduction of the
other part of his agenda: new and expanded tax breaks that get money to
people who do not earn enough to owe federal income tax. (They do pay
Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.)
Several of Mr. Obama's biggest tax proposals have been rolled into the
giant economic stimulus bill that Democrats are now pushing to get
through Congress. And while the legislation would authorize the tax
cuts for only two years, Congress has historically extended "temporary"
tax cuts for many years and even decades.
If a stimulus measure is enacted, almost all taxpayers would likely
have at least slightly lower taxes. People at the very top of the
income ladder would probably get a temporary reprieve from tax
increases. But once the economy recovers, Mr. Obama will face huge new
fiscal headaches that will make it hard to avoid broader tax increases
-- and not just on the very rich.
The Congressional Budget Office warned in December that the budget
deficit for this year would skyrocket to $1.2 trillion, a record both
in dollars and as a percentage of gross domestic product. And that
estimate did not include the stimulus bill, which would add at least
$400 billion to the deficit in both 2009 and 2010.
Despite the budgetary chaos, Obama administration officials and
Democratic leaders in Congress say they are still determined to
increase "fairness" by shifting more of the tax burden from
middle-income families to the wealthy.
MR. OBAMA'S plan, if it became law, would lead to deep changes at all
income levels. Because of the complexity of the tax code, there would
be winners and losers at almost every level. But in general, the
biggest reductions in effective tax rates would be at the bottom of the
income scale.
Over all, the Tax Policy Center estimated, about 80 percent of all
taxpayers would receive a tax cut under Mr. Obama's proposal, while 10
percent would see their taxes go up.
According to the Tax Policy Center, people near the bottom, with
incomes of $10,000 to $20,000, would see their after-tax incomes rise
by an average of 7.1 percent, or $1,019. For people earning $50,000 to
$75,000, after-tax incomes would rise 6 percent, or an average of
$1,201. Surprisingly, after-tax income would edge upward even for many
people with incomes of $200,000 to $500,000.
But tax bills would climb for people at the highest income levels.
People in the top 5 percent of income, starting at $237,000, would see
their tax rates rise 1.5 percentage points, to 26.5 percent, for an
average increase of $5,686. People in the top 1 percent, with incomes
above $619,561, would see their rates increase 5.7 percentage points,
to 34 percent. Their average tax bill would climb $114,238.
The Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2010 unless Congress renews
them. Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress would make the tax
cuts permanent for families with incomes below $200,000, but eliminate
them for people who earn more.
That would mean that the top two tax brackets would jump back to their
levels during the Clinton administration. The 33 percent bracket, which
for married couples applies to income above $200,000, would rise to 36
percent. The 35 percent bracket, for income above $357,700, would rise
to 39.6 percent.
On top of that, Mr. Obama would eliminate the Bush tax cuts on capital
gains and dividends for upper-income households. That would have the
effect of raising the top tax on capital gains to 20 percent, from 15
percent, and the top tax rate on dividends to 39.6 percent, from 15
percent. He would also preserve the estate tax on inherited wealth at
its level in 2009, which is 45 percent for estates above $3.5 million.
Both of those changes would hit the very richest families the hardest.
All told, the top 5 percent of households, with incomes above $237,040,
would see their after-tax incomes edge down by 2 percent, according to
estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings
Institution and the Urban Institute.
But the top 1 percent, with incomes above $619,000, would see their
after-tax incomes drop 8 percent, or $114,238. And those in the
stratosphere, with incomes above $2.8 million, would see their
after-tax incomes drop 10 percent, or an average of $651,000.
For all the partisan political passion over Bush tax cuts for the
wealthy, they could end up being a sideshow. Mr. Obama's economic team,
led by Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary and Lawrence H.
Summers as head of the National Economic Council, is dominated by
centrists whose top priority for the next several years will be nursing
the economy back to health.
Measured in dollars, moreover, the fight over the Bush tax cuts is a
fairly small part of the Obama plan. All told, according to the Tax
Policy Center, rescinding the tax cuts would raise about $300 billion
over 10 years. That pales in comparison with the $1.2 trillion that Mr.
Obama would spend on measures to increase tax benefits for people on
the middle and lower rungs of the ladder.
Indeed, the hottest tax issue over the next two years is likely to be
the refundable tax credit, a phrase so colorless and technocratic that
it does not even appear in a description of Mr. Obama's tax agenda on
the White House Web site. Instead, the site simply says the president's
plan would provide "broad-based relief to middle-class families,"
restore "fairness" to the tax code and "restore bottom-up economic
growth that creates good jobs in America."
But refundable tax credits would be Mr. Obama's primary tool to get
more money to the poorest households in the country.
A refundable tax credit -- like the $1,000 child tax credit -- provides
a "refund" to people even if they earned so little money that they owed
no income taxes.
The $1,000 Child Tax Credit, for example, entitles a family to subtract
$1,000 from the tax bill for each child in the household. But under
current law, the tax credit was of no use to families with incomes
below $12,550, which were too poor to owe any taxes at all. About 6.3
million low-income children were cut off entirely from the benefit in
2007, and an additional 4 million children received only partial
credit, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.
THE stimulus bill that passed the House on Jan. 28 would allow any
family to collect the refund, even if the family had no income. The
bill would cost $18 billion over two years. A Senate version of the
stimulus bill would refund the tax credit to families with incomes as
low as $6,000.
By their nature, refundable tax credits are anti-poverty measures that
take money from those who are more affluent and put it in the hands of
people with low incomes.
The concept has been around awhile. The Earned Income Tax Credit
already pays out more than $40 billion a year, mostly to low-income,
working single parents who can receive as much as $4,500 a year.
Supporters often call it the federal government's biggest antipoverty
program.
But Mr. Obama would expand such credits and add new ones. One of his
signature proposals, the "Making Work Pay" credit, would provide up to
$500 to most American workers. The House and Senate have included it in
their versions of the stimulus package. Over two years, it would cost
about $145 billion.
Likewise, the House and Senate bills also incorporate Mr. Obama's
proposals to turn existing tax breaks for college tuition into
refundable tax credits.
When Senate Republicans proposed last week to double the existing tax
credit for first-time home buyers, to $15,000, Senate Democrats not
only signaled their support but proposed making it refundable, as well.
In the end, they decided to make the tax credit not refundable, but
available to all home buyers.
But that comparative harmony is likely to dissolve, especially once
panic about the economy subsides and Democrats take a fresh look at
repealing tax cuts for people at the top. At that point, the tug-of-war
between rich and poor can be expected to resume.