Is the American system of taxation nearing a watershed moment? It doesn't seem like it, considering the political brawl in Washington over the soon-to-be-expired 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed during the Bush era. Lawmakers have known for the past several years that, if they did nothing, the tax breaks would automatically end on Dec. 31, 2010. Now, Washington is scrambling as the deadline looms and the economy sputters.
The Obama Administration is pushing to keep all the cuts except those for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000. Some congressional Democrats would like to let the package expire. Congressional Republicans are rallying around the policy of either extending the cuts or making them permanent.
At first glance, what we're witnessing is the same old, same old about taxes in Washington. The pitched battles between supply-siders and advocates of raising taxes on the rich mostly lead to tax cuts here and tax hikes there. And that tax approach over the past quarter-century past has created a bewildering maze of exemptions, exclusions, deductions, credits, carve-outs, loopholes, income phase-ins, and income phase-outs. Economists, let alone taxpayers, despair at the waste from the billions of hours and billions of dollars spent on filing, administrative, and compliance costs.
Despite unanimity about the problem and a brief moment of improvement under President Reagan in 1986, the tax code continues to accumulate ever more complexity. Reform is hard since far too many industries and individuals actually support the current setup, either because reform would hurt their pocketbooks by removing things like mortgage-interest deductibility or because they are adroit at ordering their finances around existing incentives (and disincentives). Washington lawmakers from both parties like handing out tax goodies to favored constituents in return for power and votes.
That said, major reforms have swept the nation before. Specifically, the tax historian Elliott Brownlee argues in Social Philosophy and Tax Regimes in the United States, 1763 to the Present that there have been four major shifts in U.S. tax policy. The turning points were all associated with fiscal crisis: the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The common thread is that each crisis forced the government to come up with another way to raise money.
For example, the post-Civil War federal government largely relied on steep tariffs and excise duties on such items as alcohol and tobacco. The flaws of the system were increasingly apparent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but the trade disruptions of World War I forced an overhaul. The tax regime that held sway from 1916 to 1931 was dominated by new corporate and individual income taxes, as well as excise levies on consumer goods.
"Ultimately, durable tax reform happens when it must, not when it should. It happens when old taxes just can't keep up anymore—not with fiscal demands, not with changes in the economy," writes Joseph J. Thorndike, of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, a nonprofit publisher of tax information.
The cumulative crises of the past decade have shown that the current tax regime isn't up to the funding task. Following the tragedy of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fallout in financial markets from the September 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings, the federal government's obligations have greatly expanded. Yes, much of the federal government's red ink reflects the fiscal pinch from the worst downturn since the 1930s. Eventually, an economic recovery will boost the tax coffer and some of the costs associated with war, bank bailouts, and spending to jump-start the economy will dissipate, too.
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