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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (34394)	3/25/2009 1:05:58 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Obama Asks Volcker to Lead Panel on Tax-Code Overhaul (Update2) By Roger Runningen bloomberg.com March 25 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is putting former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in charge of a tax-code review aimed at closing loopholes, streamlining the law and generating revenue, budget Director Peter Orszag said. Volcker, 81, who heads the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, is being asked to take a top-to-bottom look at the laws in an effort to rebalance the tax system. Orszag said the review, given a deadline of Dec. 4, is being ordered to make recommendations on steps to simplify the code, built over the last 96 years, in ways that would reduce tax evasion and what he called “corporate welfare.” “There are hundreds of billions of dollars in uncollected taxes each year,” Orszag said in a conference call. The Volcker board “will be examining ways of being even more aggressive on reducing the tax gap.” The tax gap is the difference between the amount of taxes owed by taxpayers and companies and the amount collected. Orszag cited academic studies suggesting that the difference is $300 billion or more. That is “ a lot of money,” he said, adding that the administration is going to be “as aggressive as possible” in reducing it. Obama made a tax overhaul part of his platform during the presidential campaign. One goal is to close loopholes that he said reward companies that move jobs overseas. Task Force Austan Goolsbee, a senior economic adviser of the president, will be named staff director of the task force, which will report back to Volcker, Orszag said. Members of the panel will include Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan; Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton; Roger Ferguson, chief executive officer of Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve; and William Donaldson, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Orszag said “the only constraint” on the task force review is that there be no tax increases during 2009 and 2010, and that the proposals shouldn’t raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a year. All Options The task force is “open to consider any options of any sort that it sees fit,” Orszag said in the conference call. He said there was no revenue “target.” One of the goals is to do “a better job of collecting taxes that are owed.” “The goal is a tax system that works better for the American people,” OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said in a separate interview. “The president’s going to ask the board that they find ways to simplify the tax code, protect progressivity in the revenue base, close tax loopholes and find ways to reduce tax evasion, and that they reduce corporate welfare.” Obama plans to ask Volcker, Goolsbee and the panel for a package of recommendations to be on his desk Dec. 4. That would leave enough time for decisions to be made and included as proposals in the White House budget for fiscal 2011, to be submitted to Congress in February 2010. The review panel will be charged with consulting “a pretty wide range of tax-policy experts and other public voices” before recommendations are made to the president, Gavin said.