The Heritage Foundation's economics team has established this "Briefing Room" to present timely and accurate research on the tax debate. This page provides hard facts to challenge the big spenders, as Heritage has done throughout its 30-year history. Check this page often for the real data on the debate!
URL:http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/taxbriefingroom.cfm
The President's economic growth plan will:
Feed economic growth
End double taxation
Protect America's seniors
Create more jobs
Benefit income tax payers
Feed Economic Growth and Create More Jobs
Rhetoric vs. Reality
Critics claim the President’s economic growth plan will drive up the federal deficit.
Reality check! Most economists agree, the resulting growth would put the "cost" of the plan at $102 billion instead of upwards of $300 billion.
Federal revenues increase when the economy grows and hundreds of thousands of new jobs are created. The Bush plan will create more than 2.1 million new jobs just in the next three years.
More jobs mean more taxpayers, which means more revenues for the federal government.
Critics claim the President’s economic growth plan only benefits the rich, the “top 1%” of Americans.
Reality check! There are only about 1.2 million taxpayers in the top 1%, yet more than 84 million Americans now own stocks. Economic growth boosts stocks, which means growing nest eggs for everybody.
And 34 million Americans would see the marriage penalty reduced, while an additional 27 million now in the top tax bracket would benefit from a lower tax rate. That’s millions more Americans who are not in the top 1% who will benefit from the Bush economic growth plan.
Critics like Bill Clinton claim President Bush’s economic growth plan will contribute to the growth in health insurance premiums.
Reality check! The truth is that a growing economy that is creating new jobs will move millions of Americans from the ranks of the uninsured into employment that provides health insurance coverage. The Bush plan is estimated to create more than 2.1 million new jobs just in the first three years after enactment and millions more during the next seven years.
Critics claim the President’s economic growth plan represents discredited “deja voodoo economics.”
Reality check! History is on President Bush’s side. His plan is based on the same economic principle underlying President John F. Kennedy's plan that sparked the economic boom of the 1960s and the record-breaking prosperity that resulted from President Ronald Reagan’s program in the 1980s.
History proves that solid economic policy seeks to lower the costs of government and let people keep more of their hard-earned dollars. Critics forget, or refuse to admit, that when government spends more and taxes more, working Americans have less to spend on things like new houses, college savings, transportation and much else.
The President' s Economic Plan equals economic growth:
Boosts the economy and creates hundred of thousands of new jobs, estimated at 2.1 million over the next 3 years.
Ensures strong economic growth not just for the next two years but for the next 10 as well. And we need a boost! The Commerce Department just reported that the economy grew at an anemic .7 of a percent last quarter. Heritage' s work indicates that the President' s plan would add a full half of a percent to the annual growth rate when fully implemented.
Enacts the best aspects of the President' s 2001 tax plan ahead of schedule.
Reduces the marriage penalty for more than 34 million married couples by doubling the standard deduction and making the starting point of the joint 27 percent bracket twice that of the starting point of the single 27 percent bracket.
Helps reduce the top marginal rate on 27 million taxpayers be enacting the rate reductions in 2004 and 2006 this year.
Benefits another 41 million taxpayers through the expansion of the 10 percent bracket.
Just What the Economy Needs
The President's plan is just what the economy needs, an analysis by Bill Beach, Director of Heritage's Center for Data Analysis.
The Real Growth Factor: Scoring Bush' s Economic Growth Plan
Alfredo Goyburu and Andrew Olivastro deliver a preliminary CDA analysis of the President's dividend tax relief plan that shows it would:
cost a total of $102 billion over 2003-2012, instead of upwards of $300 billion;
increase the employment level by an annual average of 311,000 taxpaying jobs between 2003-2012;
increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by an average of $40 billion between 2003-2012;
increase purchases of business equipment by an average of $32 billion between 2003-2012.
Fact v. Fiction: Why temporary tax cuts and tax rebates are not true ways to achieve economic growth.
Fact v. Fiction: State Spending
Fact v. Fiction: Tax Rebates
Fact v. Fiction: Temporary Tax Cuts
End Double Taxation
Rhetoric vs. Reality
Critics claim the President’s economic growth plan only benefits the rich, the “top 1%” of Americans.
Reality check! There are only about 1.2 million taxpayers in the top 1%, yet more than 84 million Americans now own stocks. Economic growth boosts stocks, which means growing nest eggs for everybody.
And 34 million Americans would see the marriage penalty reduced, while an additional 27 million now in the top tax bracket would benefit from a lower tax rate. That’s millions more Americans who are not in the top 1% who will benefit from the Bush economic growth plan.
Chart: Up to Four Layers of Tax on Income is Saved and Invested: Tax Code Punishes Capital Formation, Making America Poorer
Eliminating the double taxation of dividends would:
Reduce revenues to the Treasury by only 30 percent of the so-called static cost. Instead of a static cost of $367 billion, the ending of the double taxation of dividends so stimulates the economy that Treasury revenues only fall by $102 billion over 10 years.
Increase the employment level by an average of 311,000 taxpaying jobs per year;
Expand the revenues going to Social Security by $50 billion;
Increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by an average of $40 billion;
Increase purchases of business equipment by an average of $32 billion.
Would help the 84 million people who own stock by either cutting the taxes they pay or helping them benefit from stronger stock growth.
Tax Reform Benefits Everyone
Fundamental tax reform will allow all Americans to keep more of their money instead of sending it to Washington -- dividend tax relief is an important part of such reform.
Tax Cuts Increase Federal Revenues
Critics often claim that the 1980s Reagan tax cuts failed to increase tax revenues. Heritage's Brian Riedl has crunched numbers to show otherwise.
Interactive tool: Tax Dividend Calculator
(Flash 6 plug-in required)
Chart: Dividend Tax Relief in the OECD
This Cato Institute chart (second image) shows that the U.S. taxes dividends at the second-highest rate, globally.
Protect America's Seniors
Rhetoric vs. Reality
As of 2000, more than 42 million American workers owned a 401(k) plan, and nearly 40 percent of all U.S. households owned an IRA.
Data show that, as of 2002, nearly 53 million U.S. households (just under 50 percent) and about 84 million individuals owned some form of equities.
For more see Who Really Benefits from Dividend Tax Relief?
Benefit Income Tax Payers
Rhetoric vs. Reality
Critics claim that families and individuals who don't own stocks receive no benefit from dividend tax cuts.
Reality check! The truth is our economy benefits whenever anyone, regardless of income level, has more money to save, invest and spend. But these tax cuts do benefit everyone. When corporate managers have more money to spend they will offer more jobs, and market competition means lower prices.
Critics claim the President’s economic growth plan only benefits the rich, the “top 1%” of Americans.
Reality check! There are only about 1.2 million taxpayers in the top 1%, yet more than 84 million Americans now own stocks. Economic growth boosts stocks, which means growing nest eggs for everybody.
And 34 million Americans would see the marriage penalty reduced, while an additional 27 million now in the top tax bracket would benefit from a lower tax rate. That’s millions more Americans who are not in the top 1% who will benefit from the Bush economic growth plan.
Chart (Excel file): What the Average Family of Four Can Buy with the Tax Savings from the President's Plan
Chart (Excel file): State-by-State Breakdown of President Bush's Growth Package: Benefits for Married Couples and Families with Children
Quick Checks
What Every American Wants
A major tax cut will be a step toward smaller government.
Government is too large and intrusive.
Americans do not get their money's worth for the roughly 40% of income that is spent by government -- federal, state and local -- supposedly on their behalf, or the additional 10% or so of income that residents or businesses spend in response to government mandates and regulation.
There is only one way to cut government down to size: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance.
For government, that means cutting taxes.
Resulting deficits will be an effective -- the only effective -- restraint on the spending propensities of the executive branch and the legislature. The public reaction will make that restraint effective.
First step: Make the already voted tax reductions permanent, bring their effective dates forward, and lower the rates further to improve the quality of the already enacted tax cuts.
For more see Milton Friedman's commentary, What Every American Wants, from Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. [Subscription required].
An Economic Plan That Adds Up
President Bush's plan is a bold and visionary step that will make our nation stronger and improve the living standards of all Americans.
The president's call to end double taxation of dividends is sure to give the stock market a boost and improve America's global competitiveness.
There's no question a dividend tax cut would produce growth.
Discarding one of these extra layers of taxation will encourage businesses to invest more, leading to more jobs and higher living standards.
Removing the second tax on dividends will increase future income flow and therefore help the stock market, potentially boosting national wealth by nearly $1 trillion.
Even Marxist economists recognize that investment is the key to long-run growth and rising wages.
But this isn't just an economic issue: It's time the government stopped imposing penalties -- or granting preferences -- depending on how people get or spend their income.
You don't help the poor by imposing high taxes on the rich. Such policies simply drive money from the U.S. economy and benefit our competitors.
Critics claim the tax cuts will explode the deficit. As President Kennedy explained more than 40 years ago, the purpose of cutting taxes is not to incur a deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy that can bring a surplus.
For more see An Economic Plan That Adds Up by Dan Mitchell
Who Are the Rich?
The National Center for Policy Analysis breaks down a New York Times article examining who makes up the "rich" in America:
Some debaters base their definition on salaries -- and claim that any household making $100,000 a year is rich. Others ignore
salaries and base their definition on household assets.
Complicating the effort to define personal wealth is the question
of economic geography -- with $1 million going much further in
some areas of the country than in others.
What can't be denied is that the ranks of the well-off have
multiplied in recent years.
The fortunes of many families that were already rich have soared since 1980 -- as did the ranks of the newly
wealthy, with the ranks of households making at least $1 million almost doubling to 4.8 million from the early
1980s to the late 1990s, even after accounting for
inflation.
Almost three million of the 130 million U.S. families
filing tax returns in 2001 reported at least $200,000 of
income -- up from 1.3 million in 1995.
Wealth in the United States remains concentrated in
metropolitan and coastal areas -- but some rural enclaves and growing wealth in the Rocky Mountain states have somewhat altered that picture.
Some 13 percent of Americans consider themselves either rich or upper income -- while 59 percent say they are in the middle-income crowd, and 27 percent identify
themselves as lower income or poor.
It took an income of only $83,500 in 2001 to place an American in the top-fifth, or quintile, of earners.
The source article: David Leonhardt's, "Defining the Rich in the World's Wealthiest Nation," New York Times, January 12, 2003. |
