Waubonsee Community College

Taxing ourselves, a citizen's guide to the debate over taxes, Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. [343]-363) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Taxing ourselves

bibliography

192027239

Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija

a citizen's guide to the debate over taxes

1. Introduction -- Complaints about the current tax system -- A different way to tax -- Objections to radical reform -- Changes in the context of the current system -- The need for objective analysis -- What's in this citizen's guide -- 2. An overview of the U.S. tax system -- How governments in the United States get their money -- International comparisons -- Historical perspectives on the U.S. tax system -- Personal income taxation -- Basic features of the U.S. corporate income tax -- The Social Security payroll tax -- Estate and gift taxes -- Conclusion -- 3. Fairness -- Vertical equity and tax progressivity -- Horizontal equity: equal treatment of equals -- Transitional equity -- Conclusion -- 4. Taxes and economic prosperity -- Taxes and the business cycle -- Budget deficits and surpluses -- How much should government do? -- Tax cuts to force spending cuts versus surpluses to prepare for an aging population -- How taxes affect long-run economic prosperity: a first cut at the evidence -- How taxes affect economic prosperity: the specifics -- Conclusion -- 5. Simplicity and enforceability --How complicated is our tax system? -- What makes a tax system complicated? -- What facilitates enforcement? -- Conclusion -- 6. Elements of fundamental reform -- A single rate -- A consumption base -- A clean tax base -- Conclusion -- 7. What are the alternatives? -- How the consumption tax plans work -- At what rate? -- Simplicity and enforceability of the consumption tax plans -- Distributional effects of the consumption tax alternatives -- Economic effects of consumption tax plans -- Conclusion -- 8. Starting from here -- Integration: eliminating the double taxation of corporate income -- Corporate welfare and corporate tax shelters -- Inflation indexing -- Capital gains -- Savings incentives in the income tax -- The estate tax -- Simplifying the income tax -- Technological improvements and the promise of a return-free system -- The President's advisory panel on federal tax reform -- A hybrid approach: combining a VAT with income taxation -- Conclusion -- 9. A voter's guide to the tax policy debate -- Tax cuts versus tax reform -- Tax cuts as a Trojan horse -- The devil is in the details -- The tax system can't encourage everything -- Fairness is a slippery concept but an important one -- Be skeptical of claims of economic nirvana -- The tax system can be improved -- 2010: A double witching hour

Citizen's guide to the debate over taxes