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With President Trump proposing to eliminate the Federal tax deductions for state and local taxes, there has been an outcry from states that allow this deduction currently. The biggest criticism is that it creates “double taxation” because it forces individuals to pay two separate taxes – federal and State – on the same income- without giving any relief against the federal tax in recognition of the tax paid to the State. Without the deduction, Lawmakers warn that tax bills will rise substantially for their citizens.
However, the truth is that these attacks are nothing more than an attempt to shift the focus away from affected states (like New York, New Jersey, and California) who are failing their fiduciary responsibility to its taxpayers. They currently levy a very high level of taxation upon its citizens. The deduction is simply a subsidy that masks the egregious overspending of the state which creates the situation in which high taxation is necessary to feed the body politic.
Why should the federal government have to subsidize some states at all? If the residents of these states think that high (some would say ludicrously wasteful) government spending paid for by very high taxes is the right way to run a state, it is certainly their right. But these residents also have no right to ask taxpayers of other states to subsidize them. And that is exactly what happens when the federal tax code enables some states to reduce their federal tax — via the state and local tax deduction — simply because they pay high taxes to their states.
So yes, although the proposal will hurt some citizens, it is essentially and simply a reform that puts all taxpayers around the country on a level playing field, especially if it helps to reduce federal tax rates across the board. If lawmakers are so concerned with their affected taxpayers, they should aim to reduce the scope and size of their state governments and the wildly out of control spending that created it, instead of expecting other citizens to subsidize their irresponsibility.
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Taxpayers have been long bamboozled into making generous commitments to the retirement systems of public service workers. All over the country, in all levels of federal and state governments, these defined benefit plan pension plans have proven to be vastly untenable. To sustain the plans in their current arrangements and cover the obligations that have already been promised, the rest of society will be compelled to contribute to the retirement of those public service workers via higher taxes. This is turn makes the rest of the populace poorer — because their hard-earned money is being levied to the promised public pensioner, and not available to be saved for themselves.
The grand scheme is becoming unhinged. One must realize that the more people continue to buy into the idea that they are supposed to “retire at 65”, the more they are suckered into continuing to make their retirement years poorer and subsequently make the retirement years of public service employees richer. People see a public service worker being able to retire at that age and they think, “I should be able to also do so”. This idea needs to change.
There are two reasons why most people think that such pension programs are still sustainable and normal: 1) the exorbitant pension costs are buried in the category of “education costs” which allow advocates to falsely argue that higher education costs mean better education, and 2)the costs are largely buried in the larger budget process of federal/state/local governments (and how many people pay attention?).
In the private sector, costs are held in check by the fact that out-of-control costs make the overall cost of the product too high in the marketplace, and will bring the company down. The employees negotiate with company officials who are responsible to a board of directors and shareholders who need to provide a competitive product. But in the public sector, with no competition, costs become whatever the public sector unions can squeeze out of the elected officials who they have helped elect, and who are more accountable to them than to the taxpayers who pay the bill.
The costs to keep public employee pension plans afloat are borne by all the rest of society — the taxpayers. This arrangement enables a small group of people to be paid a sizeable and continuous pension until death. It is not out of the ordinary anymore for a person to receive $65K- $100K for the rest of his or her life. But the actuarial cost to provide that promised benefit is astronomical, and unfair to hard-working private sector employees.
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We need to eliminate the AMT from the tax code entirely. Here’s why:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (“AMT”) presents hardships to the practitioner as well as the taxpayer who prepares his own return by, as its name implies, imposing a second tax calculation mechanism on taxpayers. It serves virtually no useful purpose, other than the raising of an ever-increasing amount of tax revenue. But it has become very clear in recent years that this AMT tax revenue is not coming from just the taxpayers who were the intended targets of this tax.
The AMT was instituted in its present form when the prior “add on” Minimum Tax was transformed into the AMT in the early 1980’s. Its stated purpose was to require that all taxpayers paid at least a fair share of tax. It was to do this by identifying “loophole” type deductions, also known as “preferences”. There would then be an alternative calculation using lower tax rates applied against this taxable income as increased by the preferences. Whichever of the taxes is higher is the one the taxpayer must pay.
However the AMT was seriously flawed from the outset. Instead of focusing on these loophole type preferences (which would have limited the tax to a very small number of tax law “abusers”), the law that was passed included items that were not loopholes at all. A convoluted formula compares the differences between income and deductions to determine who falls under the guidelines.
A very substantial majority of all AMT paid by taxpayers results from the following four factors:
- Treating state and local taxes as a preference
- Treating miscellaneous deductions as a preference
- Allowing lower exemptions than the regular tax.
Each of these, however, can be quickly shown as inappropriate factors with which to base a tax system intended to just make sure everyone pays a “fair share” of tax.
- State and local taxes are hardly a loophole. The taxes exacted by state and local governments are hardly “voluntarily” paid by taxpayers in an attempt to avoid paying federal taxes.
- Miscellaneous deductions is the category of deductions that consists primarily of expenses incurred to earn income that is subject to tax. It includes unreimbursed employee expenses, investment expenses, etc. This is the most basic and important deduction needed to have a truly fair income tax system. For example, if an individual pays a lawyer a fee for collecting back wages, the legal fee is a miscellaneous deduction. If an individual pays the lawyer $300 for collecting $1000 of back pay, netting $700, the AMT would tax the individual on the full $1000.
- The exemption available under the AMT tax system is a fixed dollar amount which, unlike exemptions and standard deductions under the regular tax system, is not indexed for inflation. Furthermore, it is phased out entirely over certain income levels. And each year Congress has to approve an annual “patch”, which raises the threshold for inflation, in order to raise the exemption limits of the tax so that less wealthy taxpayers won’t be subject to the AMT.
The AMT in its present form has no place in tax law. The AMT does not serve the purpose for which it was intended and functions in a most inequitable manner while adding enormous compliance burdens. It should therefore be changed to eliminate the adjustments for state and local taxes and miscellaneous deductions, update its rates, and modify its exemption — or else the AMT needs to be eliminated completely.
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The Democrats have continuously claimed that they are looking out for America’s middle class by keeping the tax rates the same for them while seeking to raise rates on the wealthiest Americans who need to “pay their fair share”. This assertions serves to deflect attention away from the one policy that is already the mechanism for ensuring that the wealthiest pay more. What is it? The AMT.
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) currently serves virtually no useful purpose, other than the raising of an ever-increasing amount of tax revenue. The AMT was instituted in its present form when the prior “add on” Minimum Tax was transformed into the AMT in the early 1980’s. Its stated purpose was to require that all taxpayers paid at least a “fair share of tax”. Yet it has become very clear in recent years that this AMT tax revenue is not coming from just the taxpayers who were the intended targets of this tax.
The AMT was developed to identify “loophole” type deductions, also known as “preferences”. There would then be an alternative calculation using lower tax rates applied against this taxable income as increased by the preferences. Whichever of the taxes is higher is the one the taxpayer must pay.
However the AMT was seriously flawed from the outset. Instead of focusing on these loophole type preferences (which would have limited the tax to a very small number of tax law abusers), the law that was passed included items that were not loopholes at all. A convoluted formula is used to calculate and compare the differences between income and deductions in order to determine who falls under the guidelines. Interestingly, a very substantial majority of all current AMT paid by taxpayers results from the following factors: 1) treating state and local taxes as a preference; 2) treating miscellaneous deductions as a preference; 3) allowing lower exemptions than the regular tax.
These factors have flaws. For instance, state and local taxes are hardly a loophole because taxes exacted by state and local governments are hardly “voluntarily” paid by taxpayers in an attempt to avoid paying federal taxes. Likewise, “Miscellaneous Deductions” is the category of deductions that consists primarily of expenses incurred to earn income. It often includes unreimbursed employee expenses, investment expenses, etc. This is the most basic and important deduction necessary to have a truly fair income tax system and should not be considered a loophole. Furthermore, the exemption available under the AMT is a fixed dollar amount which, unlike exemptions and standard deductions under the regular tax system, is not indexed for inflation; it is also phased out entirely over certain income levels.
During AMT discussions over the years, Congress used to posture and point to the AMT patch as some major revenue loss (had the AMT been applied to those families) as an excuse to raise to raise taxes in order to offset this “potential missing tax revenue”. Once the “patch” became permanent and the higher exemption level kept many taxpayers from being hit with the AMT, Congress stopped talking about the AMT altogether. But the fact still remains that there is a parallel tax system already that goes after the highest income-earners; they already pay “their fair share” — and then some
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I’m sick and tired of reading over and over again in places both liberal and conservative that Trump’s (as well as the Republican’s) proposed tax reforms are going to give the lion’s share of the cuts to the top 1%. The entire concept is totally distorted.
In fact, nobody has been talking about the series of tax changes that occurred when Obama and his Democrat cronies passed the Obamacare increases. These raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on the wealthiest by adding a net investment income tax (NIIT), otherwise known as the “Obamacare tax,” which covered all investment income. The increase also raised capital gains tax on the wealthiest from 15% – 20%. When the 3.8% tax is added, capital gains rates effectively went from 15%- 23.8% — an increase of almost 60%. That’s ridiculous!
Those ludicrous tax increases were principally responsible — along with the hemorrhage of regulations coming out of the Obama administration — for the horrific economic performance since Obama took office. The first step of any meaningful tax reform should be to reverse those Obamacare tax increases, which went 100% to the higher income individuals, and 0% to the middle class and lower income. The reversal of those insane tax increases should in no way be considered a tax cut. It is just restoring what was in fact an egregious toxin on our entire economy.
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The appointment of Former F.B.I Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for the Trump-Russia investigation seemed like a decent choice for the task. I had only heard good things about Mueller and looked forward to getting to the bottom of whether or not there were actual, illegal ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. Unfortunately, by one single action, Robert Mueller has now revealed himself as a person unfit to be special counsel. This action was his selection of Andrew Weissmann as a key advisor in the investigation. Mueller has simply discarded his integrity. Andrew Weissmann is an outrageous, criminal human being.
Robert Mueller knows full well that Andrew Weissmann should be jailed for misconduct, or at the very least, disbarred. The one job that Weissmann should never again have is that of prosecutor. There are two very well-known, high-profile court cases I will briefly overview which will show Weissmann’s lack of any moral compass and highly unethical legal practices.
The first example is the famous Arthur Andersen case. The list of egregious behaviors by Weissmann runs long:
In an effort to make a name for himself, Andrew Weissmann brought an indictment against the Arthur Andersen firm as an entity, instead of only against the partner that allegedly committed a crime. No indictment against a company for the action of one person had never been done before — or ever since. This is especially important because Weissmann knew, that in the context of a “Big 4 CPA firm,” bringing an indictment — even if no conviction were ever accomplished — would automatically and completely destroy the firm and all of its employees, which is exactly what happened.
Once he issued forth the indictment, he used malicious and unorthodox methods to pursue his case, including threatening indictment of numerous individuals if they testified for the defense, intentionally distorting the “crimes” that Arthur Andersen allegedly committed, and refusing to allow Arthur Andersen tell their side of the story to the Grand Jury.
If that wasn’t enough, Weissmann lambasted Arthur Andersen in court for legally shredding documents, which they – in accordance with their firm’s existing policy and existing law — had no obligation whatsoever to retain. Most outrageously, Weissmann made changes to the definition of the “crime” and its level of criminal culpability (intent) in the jury instructions. With all these procedures, Weissmann strongly urged — and convinced the jury — to find Arthur Andersen guilty – even if the firm had no knowledge that its members had done anything wrong.
What’s worse is that in the end, no crime was actually ever committed, as determined later by a unanimous 9-0 Supreme Court decision. At oral argument, the Court viciously ridiculed the theory that Weissmann used in order to charge the crime in the first place. Unfortunately, that exoneration came too late: Weissmann had destroyed an 89 year-old accounting institution and eliminated 85,000 jobs by distorting the law, denying the defendants a fair trial, and taking intent out of the jury instructions, all for no purpose whatsoever, except possible personal gain and fame.
The second case high-profile case, involving Jim Brown of Merrill Lynch (also related to Weissmann’s position on the Enron task force), is equally appalling:
Andrew Weissmann persecuted and prosecuted Jim Brown, a Merrill-Lynch executive, for a deal with Enron which Weissmann argued in court was a bogus deal. The problem is that Jim Brown never extracted a deal at all; he opposed it and was not a privy to it. The deal in question involved a solicitation from Merrill-Lynch to provide $7 million cash for minority holdings in a company that electrical power barges near Nigeria; Enron held the majority interest. The crime in question was the allegation that Enron had agreed to buy the barges back later, thereby making its accounting as a gain from its sale to Merrill-Lynch wrong. Weissmann alleged that since Jim Brown was one of four Merrill-Lynch executives, he was a culpable party.
Much of the case hinged on a phone call where the deal was discussed — a phone call that Jim Brown wasn’t actually on. Weissmann met with Brown voluntarily to hear his opinion of the telephone call, and despite hearing the exculpatory explanation, Weissmann nevertheless had Brown indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Weissmann later produced an email that mentioned the phone call, written by Brown in a different context and a year after the phone call in question, then urged the judge to prevent any evidence that would explain the email’s actual meaning.
Based upon the above facts, there is no way anyone could think Jim Brown could be accused of a crime. So, in order to win that case, Weissmann (1) concocted evidence; (2) terrorized anyone that would come forth to support Jim Brown’s position; and (3) threatened prosecuting individuals who would testify for Jim Brown. More outrageously, Weissmann also hid Brady material (evidence known by Weissmann that would be important to the defense and which by law Weissmann was required to turn over); he then repeatedly lied to the court about having such material. In a truly incredible incident, a document was discovered in which Weissmann highlighted in yellow magic marker evidence that would have gone a long way to proving Jim Brown’s innocence — at the same time he was telling the court that he had no such evidence!
The atrocities don’t end there. In another example, Katherine Zrike, a key individual in the Brown transaction, virtually exonerated Brown in her testimony under oath to the Grand Jury. Weissmann hid this information from the defense (a clear Brady violation) and subsequently lied to the Court about having relevant information. Jim Brown was ultimately found guilty of fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction and sent to prison. The fraud and conspiracy charges were later overturned.
On October 26, 2011, six years after the Arthur Andersen case was decided and less than two years after the Jim Brown debacle concluded, Robert Mueller announced the appointment of Andrew Weissmann as FBI General Counsel and Deputy Director under Mueller’s watch. What’s more, in 2015, the same Weissmann moved to the criminal fraud section at Department of Justice. And now, Weissmann is a part of Mueller’s special counsel team investigating allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. This truly is the story of the fox -with blood on his lips – guarding the henhouse!
The current Trump-Russia investigation requires evenhanded, impartiality, and integrity. It’s as important as any special counsel in history. That fact that Mueller would even consider someone with such a heinous, tainted history as Andrew Weissmann to work on his team shows incredibly poor judgment. It is absolutely imperative that Robert Mueller resign now.
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Over the past 15 years, France’s tax on the wealthy has resulted in a capital flight of 35 billion euros ($41 billion). 10,000 wealthy have left the country over it, which currently applies to personal assets of more than 1.3 million euros. Noting the substantial loss, France will amend their budget so that the tax will be levied only on real estate, thereby exempting “other forms of wealth such as shareholdings in companies” in the coming year.
I wrote about this phenomenon as it was happening in 2014. It bears repeating once again: high taxes drive away citizens who wish not to hand over to the government the money they have saved and earned — just to see it misspent and frittered away.
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While reading the New York Times’ assessment of the upcoming tax cut bill, a sentence popped out at me: “Wary of any tax legislation that benefits the rich, Democrats have taken a firm stance against Republican policies that would add to the deficit and said they will not support a bill that does not pay for itself.” (“Senate Republicans Embrace Plan For $1.5 Trillion Tax Cut,” NYT: Sept 19, 2017).
This is laughable! Did the Democrats take a “firm stance” at any time during the Obama Administration against policies that added to the deficit? Of course not.
Indeed, most of the article was an attempt to paint the Republicans as hypocrites for trying to pass a tax cut plan that may or may not add to the federal debt after 10 years — while staying utterly silent about the fact that federal debt doubled during the Obama Administration, and each fiscal year ended in a deficit! The sudden interest in some sort of fiscal responsibility from the Democrats rings hollow.
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John Maudlin writes a compelling piece this week on what he coins “the bubble in government promises.” He claims it “is arguably the biggest bubble in human history. Elected officials at all levels have promised workers they will receive pension benefits without taking the hard steps necessary to deliver on those promises. This situation will end badly and hurt many people. Unfortunately, massive snafus like this rarely hurt the politicians who made those overly optimistic promises, often years ago.”
This is a theme I have been focusing on for years. His essay below is a must-read in its entirety:
This time is different are the four most dangerous words any economist or money manager can utter. We learn new things and invent new technologies. Players come and go. But in the big picture, this time is usually not fundamentally different, because fallible humans are still in charge. (Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an important book called This Time Is Different on the 260-odd times that governments have defaulted on their debts; and on each occasion, up until the moment of collapse, investors kept telling themselves “This time is different.” It never was.)
Nevertheless, I uttered those four words in last week’s letter. I stand by them, too. In the next 20 years, we’re going to see changes that humanity has never seen before, and in some cases never even imagined, and we’re going to have to change. I truly believe this. We have unleashed economic and technological forces we can observe but not entirely control.
I will defend this bold claim at greater length in my forthcoming book, The Age of Transformation.
Today we will zero in on one of those forces, which last week I called “the bubble in government promises,” which I think is arguably the biggest bubble in human history. Elected officials at all levels have promised workers they will receive pension benefits without taking the hard steps necessary to deliver on those promises. This situation will end badly and hurt many people. Unfortunately, massive snafus like this rarely hurt the politicians who made those overly optimistic promises, often years ago.
Earlier this year I called the pension mess “The Crisis We Can’t Muddle Through.” Reflecting since then, I think I was too optimistic. Simply waiting for the floodwaters to drop down to muddle-through depth won’t be enough. We face an entire new ocean, deeper and wider than we can ever cross unaided.
Storms from Nowhere?
This year marks the first time on record that two Category 4 hurricanes have struck the US mainland in the same year. Worse, Harvey and Irma landed directly on some of our most valuable and vulnerable coastal areas. So now, in addition to all the problems that existed a month ago, the US economy has to absorb cleanup and rebuilding costs for large parts of Texas and Florida, as well as our Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands territories.
Now then, people who live in coastal areas know full well that hurricanes happen – they know the risk, just not which hurricane season might launch a devastating storm in their direction. In a note to me about Harvey, fellow Rice University graduate Gary Haubold (1980) noted just how flawed the city’s assumptions actually were regarding what constitutes adequate preparedness. He cited this excerpt from a recent Los Angeles Times article:
The storm was unprecedented, but the city has been deceiving itself for decades about its vulnerability to flooding, said Robert Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and UC Berkeley emeritus civil engineering professor who has studied hurricane risks along the Gulf Coast.
The city’s flood system is supposed to protect the public from a 100-year storm, but Bea calls that “a 100-year lie” because it is based on a rainfall total of 13 inches in 24 hours.
“That has happened more than eight times in the last 27 years,” Bea said. “It is wrong on two counts. It isn’t accurate about the past risk and it doesn’t reflect what will happen in the next 100 years.”
Anybody who lives in Houston can tell you that 13 inches in 24 hours is not all that unusual. But how do Robert Bea’s points apply to today’s topic, public pensions? Both pension plan shortfalls and hurricanes are known risks for which state and local governments must prepare. And in both instances, too much optimism and too little preparation ultimately have devastating results.
Admittedly, public pension liabilities don’t come out of nowhere the way hurricanes seem to – we know exactly where they will strike. In many cases, we know approximately when they’ll strike, too. Yet we still let our elected officials make impossible-to-fulfill promises on our behalf. The rest of us are not so different from those who built beach homes and didn’t buy hurricane or storm surge insurance. We just face a different kind of storm.
Worse, we let our government officials use predictions about future returns that are every bit as unrealistic as calling a 13-inch rain in Houston a 100-year event. And while some of us have called pension officials out, they just keep telling lies – and probably will until we reach the breaking point.
Puerto Rico is a good example. The Commonwealth was already in deep debt before Irma blew in – $123 billion worth of it. There’s simply no way the island can repay such a massive debt. Creditors can fight in the courts, but in the end you can’t squeeze money out of plantains or pineapples. Not enough money, anyway. Now add Irma damages, and the creditors have even less hope of recovering their principal, let alone interest.
Puerto Rico is presently in a new form of bankruptcy that Congress authorized last year. Court proceedings will probably drag on for years, but the final outcome isn’t in doubt. Creditors will get some scraps – at best perhaps $0.30 on the dollar, my sources say – and then move on. We’re going to find out how strong those credit insurance guarantees really are.
“That’s just Puerto Rico,” you may say if you’re a US citizen in one of the 50 states. Be very careful. Your state is probably not so much better off. In 10 years, your state may well be in the same place where Puerto Rico is now. I’d say the odds are better than even.
Are your elected leaders doing anything about this huge issue, or even talking about it? Probably not.
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Minnesota’s pension fund was recently revealed to be in crisis-mode after changing the accounting formula to more accurately reflect market realities:
“The jump caused the finances of Minnesota’s pensions to erode more than any other state’s last year as accounting standards seek to prevent governments from using overly optimistic assumptions to minimize what they owe public employees decades from now. Because of changes in actuarial math, Minnesota in 2016 reported having just 53 percent of what it needed to cover promised benefits, down from 80 percent a year earlier, transforming it from one of the best funded state systems to the seventh worst, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”
During the most recent recession, the Governmental Accounting Standards Boards made accounting rules changes because it began to be more apparent that a majority of local and state pension systems were continuously understating the long-term obligations. It was common practice to depend on and project 8%-10% investment returns even when the reality was more along the lines of 2%.
When the public sector (and unions) signed off on lavish pension provisions for the employee, they hoped there would be enough growth and investment returns to cover it way down the road. There were no provisions made to handle the possibility of a low-interest rate society or a fledgling economy like we’ve experienced the last nine years; they took their chances and their fallback was always that they could suck money from the taxpayer by raising taxes to cover budgeting shortfalls. That is reckless and irresponsible.
Years of fiscal mismanagement in the public sector has resulted in this fiscal nightmare. Because the public sector does not have the economic forces of competition to keep compensation levels in check, as the public sector does, it was always incumbent upon public negotiators to manage contracts properly. Failing to properly negotiate, making cozy deals, and maintaining unsustainable defined-benefit plans has created the soaring budget and pension deficits we see across the country. Though the rules changes to actuarial math are a start, in some places, it’s too little, too late.
