View Research by Author - Rosanne Altshuler

Publications

The increase in international capital mobility over the past two decades has put pressure on the tax treatment of corporate equity income. Corporate-level taxes distort investment flows across locations and create opportunities for tax avoidance by shifting income across jurisdictions. This paper explains why there may be both efficiency gains and increases in progressivity from shifting taxes on corporate equity income from the corporate to the shareholder level. We estimate that taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income could finance a substantial cut in the corporate tax rate and make the tax system more progressive.

TPC affiliate and former director, Rosanne Altshuler's testimony before the Senate Committee on the Budget on reforming the tax code.

Corporate level income taxes encourage the outflow of capital and the shifting of reported profits to other jurisdictions. The outflow of capital shifts some of the burden of the tax from owners of capital to workers. In contrast, individual level taxes on corporate income lower the after-tax return to saving, but have less effect than corporate level taxes on the location of investment. Reversing recent cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends would finance a substantial cut in the corporate tax rate, reduce the outflow of capital, and make the tax system more progressive.

Rosanne Altshuler, former director of the Tax Policy Center, discusses the U.S. deficit in the face of recession and recovery, and potential revenue-generating solutions. How can the changes to the tax system and entitlement programs ameliorate our growing debt? For the Wall Street Journal series "America: A Portfolio of Ideas."

April is here, which means it's almost time to pony up and render unto Caesar. We've gathered our receipts and other documents, and dragged ourselves to the strip-mall tax preparer or fired up do-it-yourself software to determine how big our refund is -- or how much we owe Uncle Sam. No one likes to pay taxes, but as we get ready to stand in line at the post office on the 15th, it might be useful to dispel some of the most common myths about this springtime ritual.

The Tax Policy Center has examined the key tax proposals in President Obama's 2011 budget. Separate discussions below describe each of the proposals including current law, proposed changes, and, when appropriate, the distributional effects. The budget as presented by the president lacks complete details on many of the tax proposals. Some provisions had virtually no detail and our discussion of them is necessarily limited.

In August 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2009) projected that the federal budget deficit would total $7.1 trillion over the 2010-2019 decade-under current law. That outcome would require the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to sunset as scheduled in 2011 and Congress to stop "patching" the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to minimize its bite. If neither of those things happens, CBO says the cumulative deficit over the decade would jump to $11.1 trillion, more than doubling the national debt. CBO characterizes that situation as being unsustainable and it is hard to find anyone who would disagree.

Suppose that a taxpayer earns an additional dollar of income. How much tax would she owe on that dollar? A natural way to answer this question would be to look up the taxpayer’s statutory tax rate - the tax rate corresponding to her tax bracket and filing status.

An informal discussion with Tax Policy Center Director Len Burman and Co-director Rosanne Altshuler. Why should you care about tax policy?

Rosanne Altshuler, codirector of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, answers five questions about tax reform and her experience as chief economist on President Bush's 2005 tax reform panel. The panel's report, Altshuler said, should serve as a blueprint for President Obama's tax reform commission—though the recession makes many of the proposed actions harder to take.

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