Achieving Progressive Tax Reform In An Increasingly Global Economy PDF Download

"The progressive tax system, and the nation's fiscal system more boradly, have historically played an important role in expanding opportunities for all Americans while reducing inequality. But the same dynamic forces of technological change, financial innovation, and globalization that have contributed to rising income inequality also present new challenges for progressive taxation. Financial engineering, for example, has made it easier for the financially sophisticated--typically the wealth--to take advantage of new financial instruments that shelter their gains from tax. And as capital is able to move ever more quickly and easily across borders, corporate income becomes increasingly elusive of taxation. These forces, together with deliberate policy changes, have led to an erosion of progressivity--the principle that higher incomes should face higher rates of taxation--and a dramatic reduction in the average tax rate facing very high-income households. More than half of that decline is the result of declining effective corporate tax rates, as high-income households own disproportionate amounts of capital. The tax code is not only a means of raising revenue to pay for government services. It also impactsan astonishing array of economic and social activities, from honeownership to education and child care to support for low-income workers. Taxes contribute, as part of the problem or as part of the solution, to many of the challenges our nation faces. The present tax treatment of health insurance, for example, pushes health spending upward while offering many of the uninsured little help in getting coverage. The tax treatment of retirement savings provides a windfall for high-income Americans who would likely have saved anyway, while offering scant encouragement to saving by low- and moderate-income Americans, many of whom face the prospect of an insecure retirement. America's factories and cars continue to emit vast amounts of the carbon dioxide that drives climate change, a problem that would be remedied, in part, if the tax code imposed a cost for buring corbon-emitting fossil fuels"--Page 3.