35% The U.S. corporate tax rate. 9.2% The current unemployment rate. 55 The percentage of Americans who oppose including any tax hikes in the debt deal, according to a Rasmussen poll. 1 President who has repeatedly called for increasing taxes on job creators as part of any plan to increase the debt limit. ZERO How much sense it makes to tax the very people we are depending on to create the jobs we need to help get roughly 14 million unemployed Americans back to work. As businesses struggle in a... Read more

With less than two weeks before the August 2 deadline to address the debt limit challenge or risk defaulting, President Obama still has yet to articulate a single spending cut he is willing to make in order to get our country back on a path to fiscal sustainability. Since President Obama took office, he and Congressional Democrats have increased the debt $3.4 trillion with ineffective policies such as their failed stimulus. The President’s empty political rhetoric shows he is unwilling to lead a... Read more

Today, President Obama is expected to lay out his plan to increase taxes as part of the debt ceiling discussions. So continues the Democrats' practice of taxing the job creators we need to spark an economic recovery. To quote the President himself, “[T]he last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just...take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.” Below are reminders of how the policies supported by the Obama Adminis... Read more

Recent media accounts confirm the findings of a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT): a majority of American households do not pay any federal income taxes. Almost incomprehensibly, significant numbers of both higher and lower earners are paying zero income tax. A recent Bloomberg article highlighted the fact that the “number of people who reported incomes of at least $200,000 and paid no U.S. income taxes jumped 79.5 percent in 2008 from 2007, according to an Internal Revenue Servi... Read more

Last week marked the 10-year anniversary of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA). As noted in a report by the Tax Foundation, these tax rates, which were fully phased-in as of 2003, will soon be among the longest lasting tax rates in history. Though it has been suggested on numerous occasions by Congressional Democrats and the Administration that they believe large portions of those rates should be allowed to expire – increasing taxes on families, investors and ... Read more

During a recent hearing of the Ways and Means Committee, job creators from across the country shared the challenges their businesses face under the current tax code. Witnesses expressed support for approaches proposed in the Republicans' Jobs Agenda which calls for lower tax rates, more certainty and greater simplicity. They urged Congress to take action to make America a more attractive place to invest and create the jobs we need here at home. Witnesses also highlighted the need to help job cre... Read more

Today, in a hearing in the Ways and Means Committee, job creators and tax experts discussed how today’s current tax system inhibits, rather than promotes, job creation. Excerpts from witness testimony demonstrate that lower tax rates, more certainty and greater simplicity in the tax code are vital to a climate ripe for job growth and promoting U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. These issues must be addressed as part of comprehensive tax reform that benefits families, employers and the U... Read more

Despite President Obama’s continued push to increase taxes, prominent economic advisers to Democrats suggest higher taxes are bad for the economy. Christina Romer In a study published with her husband, also a noted economist, Dr. Romer found that “tax changes have very large effects on output” and that “an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by almost three percent.” Mark Zandi In July of last year, when the economy was in much the same state as it is today, Moody’s econ... Read more

Today, in a hearing examining the administration of refundable tax credits, Ways and Means Democrats refused to address the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in the current tax code which has led to over $100 billion in improper payments — robbing taxpayers of their hard-earned tax dollars. Despite testimony offered by witnesses from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration (TIGTA) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailing the scope of im... Read more

Organizations representing 95 percent of America’s businesses – including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business – sent a letter to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees opposing a corporate-only approach to tax reform. The letter calls on Congress to act on comprehensive tax reform. In the letter the organizations state: “Every day, nearly 70 million Americans wake up and go to work at a firm organized as something other than a C corpor... Read more