The inequality narrative driving tax policy this year is built on three shaky foundations: (1) that the rich have captured all the economic gains in recent years, (2) that Americans support very high tax rates, and (3) that America thrived under much higher tax rates than are being considered today.  S-Corp addressed the first two fallacies (here and here).  A recent Senate Finance Committee hearing on how to make the tax code fair provides a good example of why the third leg is just as unstable.

The hearing featured Abigail Disney, who is part of the group …

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Politico recently ran a story about the soul-searching taking place in the polling community, whose 2020 projections predicted a landslide victory for Joe Biden and an significant expansion of the Democratic majority in the House.

“Twenty-twenty was an ‘Oh, s—‘ moment for all of us,” said one pollster involved in the effort, who was granted anonymity to discuss the process candidly. “And I think that we all kinda quickly came to the point that we need to set our egos aside. We need to get this right.”

That’s about where the answers end. The collaboration’s first public statement acknowledges that their industry “saw …

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The Biden Administration’s sales pitch for their proposed business tax hikes goes something like this: Rates were too high prior to 2017 but Republicans overshot the mark and set them too low.  Democrats want to find a happy middle ground. President Biden said as much in his remarks last week:

We’re going to raise the corporate tax rate. It was 35 percent for the longest time, which was too high.  Barack and I thought it was too high during our administration.  We all agreed five years ago that it should come down somewhat, but the previous administration reduced it all the …

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As we previously mentioned, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing yesterday to discuss various proposals to “make the wealthiest people and largest corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”  It was predictably dull and partisan.  There was, however, one moment of “Oh, that’s interesting.”

It started when Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about the concept of good tax policy, and where the tax code should go:

I think there’s a lot of big ideas about tax reform that are out there…I hope we might get into a big, structural tax reform discussion. 

I’m a little bit nervous – I think we’ll …

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With impeachment over, congressional Democrats are turning their attention to their $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. House committees spent prior weeks marking up pieces of the bill, which will be consolidated into a single “reconciliation” package by the Budget Committee today and then considered by the full House later this week.

For the Main Street business community, the process here is as important as the policy.  The congressional majority chose to use reconciliation to move their COVID relief package, which raises several issues worth highlighting.

Senate Rules Under Pressure

The primary benefit of using reconciliation in the Senate is the ability to pass …

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