Results for “corporate tax” 260 found
Kamala Harris economic record
As a presidential candidate, Ms. Harris proposed replacing Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts with a monthly refundable tax credit worth up to $500 for people earning less than $100,000. The policy, known as the LIFT the Middle Class Act, was unveiled in 2018 and aimed to address the rising cost of living by providing middle-class and working families with money to help pay for everyday expenses. She framed it as a way to close the wealth gap in the United States.
In 2019, Ms. Harris proposed increasing estate taxes on the wealthy to pay for a $300 billion plan to raise teacher salaries. In what was billed as the “largest federal investment in teacher pay in U.S. history,” the plan would have given the average teacher in America a $13,500 pay increase.
…Ms. Harris wanted to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 35 percent, which is higher than the 28 percent that Mr. Biden had proposed.
And:
Ms. Harris made affordable housing a priority during her tenure in the Senate and her presidential campaign, but took a different approach. She proposed the Rent Relief Act, which would have provided refundable tax credits allowing renters who earn less than $100,000 to recoup housing costs in excess of 30 percent of their incomes.
To help the poorest, Ms. Harris also called for providing emergency relief funding for the homeless and for spending $100 billion in communities where people have traditionally been unable to get home loans because of discrimination.
And:
Ms. Harris, who served as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, has also focused heavily on consumer protection. In 2016, she threatened Uber with legal action if the company did not remove driverless cars from the state’s roads.
After the 2008 financial crisis, she pulled California out of a national settlement with big banks, leveraging her power to wrest more money from major mortgage lenders. She later announced that California homeowners would receive $12 billion in mortgage relief under the settlement.
Here is the full NYT piece by Alan Rappeport.
An event study of sorts
Big, sudden changes in election probabilities are unusual in American politics, though it seems we just had one. Here are some results, as reported in the FT:
US closed higher in the first session of the second half of the year, even as Treasury yields hit multi-week highs.
Strong gains in the technology sector helped the benchmark S&P 500 add 0.3 per cent despite almost three quarters of the index’s constituents declining on the day. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8 per cent, with every Magnificent Seven tech group finishing higher.
Treasuries sold off as traders weighed higher odds of Donald Trump being elected as US president later this year. The yield on the 10-year bond jumped 0.14 percentage points to 4.48 per cent, its highest level in a month.
“There are several investment implications of Trump back in the White House,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital. “[Most notable would be] a higher-for-longer Fed, as monetary policymakers increase the likelihood that the corporate tax cuts will be extended next year.”
The immediate S&P 500 reaction was modestly positive too, about half a percentage point up.
The polity and culture that is Oregon
Oregon voters will likely decide in November whether to establish a historic universal basic income program that would give every state resident roughly $750 annually from increased corporate taxes.
Proponents of the concept say they likely have enough signatures to place it on the ballot this fall, and opponents are taking them seriously…
“It’s looking really good. It’s really exciting,” said Anna Martinez, a Portland hairstylist who helped form the group behind the campaign, Oregon People’s Rebate, in 2020. If approved by voters, the program would go into effect in January 2025.
Most of the Portland business community opposes the proposal. Here is the full story, via Mark W.
Two From the Tabarrok Brothers
Maxwell Tabarrok offers an excellent review of an important paper.
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century is a 2018 paper by Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas, and Stefanie Stantcheva that provides some answers. They collect and clean new datasets on patenting, corporate and individual incomes, and state-level tax rates that extend back to the early 20th century. The headline result: taxes are a huge drag on innovation. A one percent increase in the marginal tax rate for 90th percentile income earners decreases the number of patents and inventors by 2%. The corporate tax rate is even more important, with a one percent increase causing 2.8% fewer patents and 2.3% fewer inventors.
Especially useful is Max’s back of the envelope calculation putting this result in the context of other methods to increases innovation.
Read the whole thing.
For something completely different, Connor Tabarrok offers an update on Charlotte the Stingray:
A “miracle pregnancy” picked up by national news brought huge business to a small-town aquarium, but months after the famous stingray was due, there are still no pups. Are we being scammed by a fish?
I particularly liked this line:
Taking all of this into account, my stance is that even if they got it on, it’s unlikely that this shark will have to dish out any child support to Charlotte’s pups.
Read the whole thing.
Are MR readers more interested in tax policy or virgin birth stingrays? We shall see.
Friday assorted links
Friday assorted links
Thursday assorted links
1. A critical history of the AI safety movement.
2. Richard Hanania on class-based affirmative action.
3. James J. Lee comment on the new Greg Clark results.
4. Emily Wilson on different Iliad translations, and her new one (NYT).
5. What happened to the global corporate tax rate deal?
6. People who make money running YouTube channels showing how much they lose by playing slot machines (WSJ).
Côte d’Ivoire claim of the day
Côte d’Ivoire citizens pay the highest income taxes in the world according to this year’s survey findings by World Population Review.
While both its sales and corporate tax regimes may be considerably lower than those of other countries globally, at 60%, Côte d’Ivoire’s income tax rates are markedly higher compared to developed countries.
Only Finland (56.95%), Japan (55.97%), Denmark (55.90%), and Austria (55%), closely follow Côte d’Ivoire to round up the top five countries with the highest income tax, in a study that surveyed over 150 countries.
How much people pay of course is yet another matter. Here is the link, via Jodi Ettenberg.
Friday assorted links
The Truss economic plan
On Friday [as indeed it happened], Ms. Truss’ government is expected to announce a series of tax cuts, including cutting taxes for new home purchases as well as reversing planned hikes in the corporate tax and cutting a recent increase in payroll taxes. It will also abolish limits on bonuses for bankers and allow fracking for shale gas across the U.K.
The measures come in addition to a big government spending plan to cap household and corporate energy bills this winter that could cost the U.K. government roughly £100 billion, equivalent to about $113 billion, over the next two years.
The goal is to spur growth in an economy facing weak growth and high inflation, partly brought on by an energy price shock from higher natural-gas prices from the war in Ukraine, as well as a U.S.-style labor shortage. Absent the government bailouts, economists warned that many Britons would be unable to pay their energy bills this coming winter and thousands of companies would go broke…
The government is also planning a deregulation drive, in particular in the finance sector, to try to bolster London’s role as a business hub.
Taken together, the Truss plan is a bold but risky gamble that the payoff from higher growth will more than offset the risks from a big expansion in the government’s deficit and debt at a time of high inflation and rising interest rates, which will increase the cost of servicing the debt and could shake investors’ confidence in the U.K. economy and its currency.
Here is more from the WSJ. Elsewhere Ryan Bourne covers the tax changes in more detail:
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- the recent 1.25 percent employer and employee national insurance tax rises have been reversed;
- the basic rate of income tax would be cut from 20 percent to 19 percent;
- the highest 45 percent marginal income tax rate would be abolished entirely, making 40 percent the top official marginal rate band;
- stamp duty (the property transactions tax) on all transactions up to home values of £250,000 and £425,000 for first-time buyers has been scrapped;
- the planned increase in the corporate profits tax has been abandoned (so maintaining it at 19 percent);
- full and immediate expensing in the corporate tax code for the first £1 million invested in plant and machinery would be made permanent;
- new investment zones would be introduced, in which there would be a 100 percent first year enhanced capital allowance relief for plant and machinery and building and structures relief of 20 percent per year.
And on regulation:
- new investment zones would encompass streamlining existing planning applications (and these are potentially big zones, if the councils and authorities in discussions are any guide – the Greater London Authority, for example);
- environmental reviews would be shortened and reformed;
- childcare deregulation proposals (probably on staffing and occupational licensing) are forthcoming;
- new planning reforms for housing are forthcoming;
- the onshore wind generator ban will be lifted;
- the fracking moratorium has been lifted;
- the cap on bankers’ bonuses will be abandoned;
- agricultural regulation will be reformed;
- the sugar tax and lots of other anti-obesity regulations will be abandoned;
- the arduous tax rules on contractors known as IR35 will be scrapped;
- all future tax policy will be reviewed through this prism of simplification;
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there will be an expansion of the number of welfare claimants who must submit to more intensive work coaching with the aim of increasing their hours
The FT details the negative reaction from UK bond, equity, and currency markets. Furman and Buiter are very negative, Summers too. In my view, these are mostly good policies, but how will all that borrowing go over? And is the Bank of England up to doing the appropriate offsets? I will cover these policies as they unfold…
Ireland facts of the day
The republic is enjoying a €8bn corporate tax windfall after bumper pandemic-enhanced revenues from tech and pharmaceutical companies. The tax take from companies attracted by Ireland’s 12.5 per cent corporate rate has soared since 2015 and leapt a further 30 per cent last year compared with 2020.
Ireland’s economy expanded by 6.3 per cent over the second quarter, against an EU average of just 0.6 per cent. So great was the impact from multinationals that Ireland’s numbers distorted EU figures, despite the nation of 5.1mn making up less than 3 per cent of the region’s economy.
Here is more from the FT.
From Kalshi Markets
I wanted to reach out and provide some updates about new markets on the Exchange that may be of interest. We have a new market on whether the FDA will approve a vaccine for kids, in addition to a market on whether the CDC will identify a “variant of high consequence” (Delta is only a “variant of concern”). We also have markets about whether the Fed will taper at its next meeting, whether the U.S. will raise the debt ceiling before October 19, and whether or not Jerome Powell will be replaced….We also have markets on whether the capital gains and corporate tax will be raised, in case that’s of interest.
Go trade!
Nach dem Gleichgewicht auflösen
Swiss-based multinationals such as commodities trader Glencore will receive subsidies and other incentives under plans Switzerland is drawing up to maintain its competitive tax rates, even as the country prepares to sign-up to the G7’s new plan for a global minimum tax on big businesses.
Bern is consulting its cantonal governments — which set their own corporate tax rates — to examine how measures such as research grants, social security deductions and tax credits could create a “toolkit” to offset any changes to headline tax rates, officials told the Financial Times.
Here is the full FT story by Sam Jones.
Wednesday assorted links
1. SkyHub.
3. The economics of religious festivals in Mexico.
4. Claims about housing. And Samuel Hughes and Ben Southwood on very localized zoning — “strong suburbs.”
5. MIE?: Corporate tax futures.
6. Are universities really somewhat right-wing/centrist? (Teen Vogue)
Saturday assorted links
2. People systematically overlook subtractive changes. And a Patrick Collison comment: “An obvious point that took me way too long to appreciate: in software engineering, you should probably optimize for speed even when you don’t have to, because it’s one of the easiest/best ways to prioritize subtraction and parsimony in the solution space.”
3. Against alcohol.
4. Ezra Klein interviews Brian Deese about the economic thinking of the Biden Administration (with transcript). A good instantiation of “where they are at.”
5. Various observations on the Biden corporate tax plan.
6. ‘Sense of Disappointment’ on the Left as the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Unfolds.” (NYT) Again, I’m going to double down on my earlier claim that the progressive Left has peaked (which is not to claim that statism has peaked, it hasn’t). This is NYC people!
7. Fact and fiction about Ethiopia’s ethnofederalism? The content is hardly controversial to most readers I suspect, or even deeply committal on main issues, but the author chose anonymity nonetheless, which is itself a meta-comment on the piece’s own topic.
8. Map of all the physics particles and forces, highly useful, good explication, I don’t find any of this stuff intuitive. “Strangely, there are no right-handed W bosons in nature.” What is wrong with you people!? Why can’t it all be windowless monads? Or is it?