Those Bush tax cuts are a gift that just keeps on giving. They are a big reason the national debt is so high, requiring huge interest payments, and a big reason that the Treasury faces such large shortfalls every month between what comes in the door and what goes out. Yet, somehow, conservatives

One of the most alarming aspects of a possible default is also one that gets the least attention: A default would raise the cost of federal borrowing, perhaps for years to come, and send the deficit soaring. If Treasury securities become, well, less secure, the United States will have to pay

Fiscal hawks love to remind us that interest payments on the national debt will be a major driver of future U.S. budget deficits. Just last week, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) published a doom-and-gloom paper that noted that interest payments were the single fastest growing

There are a bunch of good, practical arguments for giving low-wage workers a pay hike -- like the fact that putting more money in the pockets of these workers would spur consumer demand and economic growth. But here's another strong point that you don't hear much about: Reducing wage inequality is

Beth Simone Noveck and Carl Malamud are pushing the IRS to publicly disclose more data on tax-exempt groups, make it more accessible in electronic form, and to do so more promptly. Count me among the effort’s biggest cheerleaders. If this push succeeds, we'll have a better handle on a key sector in

It's no secret that sales taxes are a regressive way to raise revenues. And the heavy reliance on such taxes across the country explains why state tax systems tend to clobber the poor while asking little of the rich.

The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.

Over the past decade or two, top transnational corporations -- including Apple, GE, and Google -- have figured out how to sidestep national tax collection systems, depriving governments of billions of dollars in revenues.

This week has delivered two economic surprises that illustrate the right way and the wrong way to respond to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. First, the euro zone economy shrank more than expected in the past three months, moving France back into a recession. That's what

What's problematic about the RATE Coalition's arguments is that it doesn't acknowledge basic facts about U.S. corporate taxes.