Progs Give New Meaning To “Tax Distortions”

16 Tuesday Apr 2019

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Andrew Wilford, Bernie Sanders, CATO Institute, Chris Edwards, Christine Elba, Kamala Harris, Matthew Yglesias, National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Progressive Taxes, Tax Distortions, Tax Policy Center, Tax Refunds

Tax day has come and gone, but I’m struck by 1) the incredible misconceptions people express about the change in their tax liabilities caused by the 2018 income tax legislation; and 2) the confusion about how our progressive income tax system actually works! Some of these misapprehensions are encouraged by progressives who would rather misinform the public than evaluate policy on its own terms. I am not a fan of our income tax system, nor all aspects of the 2018 tax law, but let’s at least discuss it honestly.

First, a substantial majority of taxpayers paid lower taxes on their 2018 income than they would have under prior tax rules (also see here). However, as I’ve observed before, many people conflate the change in the amount of their tax refund with the change in their taxes paid. And again, the progressive media hasn’t helped to allay this misconception, as noted by Vox cofounder Matthew Yglesias when he tweeted this:

“Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut.”

Even worse, members of Congress misrepresent the facts with little media backlash. For example, Andrew Wilford of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation reports the following:

“… the tax cut actually made the tax code more progressive, not less. … Of course, none of this stopped Democrats such as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) from claiming that the TCJA was a “middle-class tax hike.” Nor did it prevent three separate Democratic senators from claiming that the average family making up to $86,000 would see a tax hike of $794, despite the fact that the source for this claim clarified that this tax hike would apply to only 6.5 percent of households in this income bracket.”

It’s amazing just how drastically our income tax system is misunderstood or often misrepresented by the media. Apparently, it’s considered politically advantageous to do so. Chris Edwards offers the following quote from Christine Elba in the Washington Post:

“Meanwhile, the wealthier among us (remember: corporations are people, too!) are able to hire tax lawyers, consultants and accountants to clue them in on lightly advertised but heavily lobbied for loopholes that allow them to pay a lower tax rate or even no taxes at all.”

That is simply not a fair characterization of our income tax system. Edwards goes on to demonstrate the progressive nature of U.S. income taxes based on information from the Tax Policy Center. Not only do statutory federal income tax rates rise with income, but so do average effective tax rates, which account for the effects of deductions, credits and exclusions. In fact, average effective rates are negative in the lowest income groups and are zero on balance for the lowest 50% of earners. And average effective rates keep rising in the top quintile, moving up through the top 10%, 5%, 1% and 0.1%. Ms. Elba is clearly confused. And if she is aware of the pernicious double-taxation of corporate income, she probably would never admit it.

Apparently the current state of income tax progressivity is not enough to satisfy statists and redistributionists, who take license to lie about it in order to make their case for higher taxes on the rich, and even the not-so-rich. But here’s some advice for Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and others who insist that, while they are rich, they desperately want to pay more taxes: you are free to do so without penalty. Better yet, give it to a good charity instead!

Dynamism and Punishment

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by pnuetz in Income Distribution, Taxes

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Congressional Budget Office, Financial Crisis, Income Migration, Mark Perry, Middle Class, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Regime Uncertainty, Scott Sumner, Tax Policy Center, Tax Progressivity, Weak Obama Recovery

econ

The “squeeze” on the U.S. middle class is a fiction. If you don’t believe it, take a look at the “gif” above. It first appeared in The Financial Times (FT) with a misleading description about how “…technological change and globalization drive a wedge between the winners and losers in a splintering US society.” It’s obvious that the middle class, as statically defined by the FT, is shrinking only because it is moving up to higher real income levels (i.e., adjusted for inflation). Mark Perry uses this and other supporting charts in noting that “…so many middle-income households have become better off“. Some of these gains are related to an aging population, but the gains are not remotely consistent with FT’s dramatization. One point of emphasis that the chart should make obvious, but doesn’t quite, is that groups appearing to remain within a particular income range over time are never comprised of the same individuals. There is always movement up and down across all of these groups from year-to-year.

There is a stagnation story here, but it’s more limited than suggested by FT’s narrative. It is twofold: first, the financial crisis in 2007-2009 put a temporary stop to the upward income migration, and its resumption during the Obama presidency has been less robust; second, the very lowest-income segment, $0 – $10,000 of annual income, has expanded in each time interval shown since 1991, from just above 1% of adults to roughly 2.5%. A primary reason for the tepid growth of the U.S. economy since the recession’s trough in 2009, and the weaker migration, has been weak physical investment in the productive economy from its recession lows. That form of spending usually takes a lead role in economic recoveries. A number of observers have attributed the poor performance this time around to “regime uncertainty“, or the risk that regulatory and tax regimes could take an even more destructive toll in the future, essentially devouring returns to capital. As for the increases in the lowest-income sliver of the chart, Scott Sumner says:

“It could be due to expansion of the welfare state, the break-up of the traditional family, or perhaps growth in the underground economy. Nonetheless, it is cause for concern. But it has nothing to do with the mythical decline in the ‘middle class.’“

A related fiction is that the U.S. tax system is unfair to the middle class, and that higher income groups do not pay their “fair share”. This is put to rest in an “Issue Brief” from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PPF), using data from the Tax Policy Center and the Congressional Budget Office. The analysis shows that while high-income taxpayers benefit from tax breaks, those breaks offset high marginal tax rates and do not diminish the fact that the tax system is highly progressive:

“The Tax Policy Center estimates that 69 percent of taxes collected in 2015 will come from those in the top quintile, or those earning an income above $138,265 annually. Within this group, the top one percent of income earners — those earning more than $709,166 in income per year — will contribute over a quarter of all federal revenues collected.“

Apparently, the PPF analysis does not account for the impact of transfer payments on progressivity, which make average effective tax rates negative at low income levels. However, PPF does acknowledge that the tax system is unnecessarily complex and creates a web of distortions and poor incentives that limit economic growth. It’s a wonder that the dynamic of upward migration in real income was possible at all.

Without Reform, Social Security Is a Game of Chance

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by pnuetz in Social Security

≈ 1 Comment

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Congressional Budget Office, Cost of Living Adjustments, Intergenerational Transfers, Internal Rates of Return, Michael Tanner, Pay-As-You-Go, Social Security, Social Security Privatization, Social Security Trust Fund, Tax Policy Center, The Urban Institute

Social Security does not provide future retirees with a safe “return” on taxes paid into the system on their behalf, given the program’s funding problems. It’s not even clear that it provides a decent return to many current retirees, and it will get worse as younger age cohorts become eligible. Demographic changes worked in the system’s favor in its early years, but no more: the number of eligible retirees is growing faster than the working-age population. This has led to cash flow deficits since 2010 that will widen in the years ahead. The unfunded liabilities of the system are currently estimated to be $26 trillion. The so-called “Trust Fund” for retirement holds about about $2.8 trillion of government securities, but those can’t be “cashed out” without a raid on general tax revenue or new borrowing by the Treasury.

Michael Tanner reveals the absurdity of some of the myths surrounding SS, such as claims that there is “no crisis” (and even more absurdly, that benefits should be expanded), that the Trust Fund will “save” the system, and that SS payroll taxes are “saved” for retirees. They are not saved; it is a “pay-as-you-go” system with current payroll tax collections paid out to today’s retirees. Here is Tanner on the woeful state of the system’s finances:

“According to projections by the Congressional Budget Office, for workers born in the 1980s, there are only enough funds to pay 76 percent of their schedule benefits; for today’s children born in the 2000s, this falls to 69 percent. And, taxes are already so high relative to benefits that young people will receive far less than they could receive if they invested their taxes privately.“

Measuring the return on Social Security (SS) payroll taxes (otherwise known as FICA) is not without controversy. The Social Security Administration (SSA) performs its own analyses of the returns on payroll taxes periodically. They analyze individuals at different income levels for each of four circumstances: single men, single women, one-earner couples and two-earner couples. They do so under different scenarios about future payroll taxes and benefits. The benefits include cost-of-living adjustments. These calculations show that today’s younger workers, singles and high-income workers can expect to receive the lowest returns. According to the most recent report, from December 2014, annual rates of return for those not yet drawing benefits under present law varies from less than 1% to 6.5%. Of course, the promised benefits are not sustainable under present law.

Reforms are not optional, as the program cannot run a deficit under its current authority once the Trust Fund is exhausted. SSA attempts to analyze steps that might close the gap and the impact of those changes on returns to retirees. One scenario involves higher payroll taxes and another lower benefits. These changes reduce the calculated returns in all cases, though even the lowest returns remain positive, if barely. These alternative scenarios involve no changes until 2033, however.

At the time of the SSA report, the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that the SS Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2033. More recently, the CBO predicted that the fund will run dry in 2029. (The Disability Trust Fund is projected to run dry in 2017.) Therefore, the returns calculated by SSA under the alternative scenarios are over-estimates, since more drastic and earlier measures are required to restore balance. It’s likely that some of those returns would turn negative using SSA’s methodology. And it’s not unreasonable to suggest that reforms, whatever shape they might take, should be implemented sooner than 2029. After all, the need for reforms is well known, and we’re talking about it now! As for the SSA’s alternative scenarios, changes much sooner than 2033 would cause even lower returns.

While the SSA’s effort to provide the estimates is laudable, there are several aspects of the methodology that are questionable. SSA claims that the returns are real (inflation-adjusted) internal rates of return (IRRs), but they do not offer a detailed explanation of the inflation adjustment that must take place after calculating the nominal IRR. Using projected cost-of-living increases to inflate future benefits does not make the calculated IRRs “real”, if that’s what they have in mind. Second, the cost-of-living adjuster is the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, which underestimates inflation experienced by the elderly. Third, they do not attempt to account for the probability of death before retirement, which would obviously reduce the return on contributions for single earners.

The “present-law” returns are essentially irrelevant, given the unfunded projected benefits. But the calculations under the alternative scenarios fail on other grounds: they are not “dynamic” in terms of adjusting for the economic impacts of the policy changes. In particular, higher payroll taxes are likely to reduce employment and slow the economy. A slowdown might even lead to additional claims on the system from earlier-than expected retirements. Thus, the higher payroll tax rates used by SSA will not be sufficient to close the gap. Likewise, reduced benefits would have a negative impact on the economy, reducing payroll tax collections. In both cases, dynamic economic effects would cause a wider funding gap; closing it will reduce returns more than suggested by SSA’s calculations.

An analysis by the Urban Institute in 2012 made somewhat arbitrary assumptions about rates of return. They used a 2% real rate of return to compound past contributions and discount future benefits (presumably with no cost-of-living adjustment). Under their assumptions, the value of payroll tax contributions at retirement often exceeds the discounted value of SS benefits for age cohorts turning 65 in 2010 and 2030. That implies that the real IRR must be lower than 2%.

As a hypothetical exercise, if individuals could invest their own payroll contributions over their working lives, significantly better returns could be earned than the IRRs discussed above, even if workers were forced into low-risk investments as they approach retirement. Therefore, the implied value of payroll contributions at retirement inherent in the IRR calculations is far too low. And while the discounting of retirement benefits at a relatively low rate reflects an appropriate conservatism, the level of SS benefits would not be competitive with the dollar returns on safe investments funded by a larger pot at retirement. The IRR calculations show only that the SS program is about as good as stuffing money into a mattress.

Unfortunately, the mattress might burn. The risks inherent in future SS benefits are substantial, and none of the reform alternatives are very popular. Some of the opposition is rooted in unreasonable criticism: No one has suggested programatic changes that would affect the benefits of anyone over the age of 55. Still, cuts in benefits for future retirees, delayed eligibility and higher payroll taxes are not easy sells. Another solution is to phase out the pay-as-you-go system, allowing younger workers the option of a a self-directed account (subject to certain restrictions), including a discounted “cash value” credit as a buyout for previous contributions. This was discussed in a recent post on Sacred Cow Chips.

Social Security is unsustainable and is an inter-generational rip-off in its current, pay-as-you-go form, as younger, less affluent workers subsidize current retirees, who are relatively wealthy as a class. Rather than shutting-down debate over reforms with exaggerated political claims, those interested in assuring a viable public retirement program should consider proposals that would give workers more choice and control, taking advantage of the higher returns available on private investments. Only this type of program can take advantage of the economy’s ability to convert savings into productive investment and real growth. Simple transfers from young to old do not leverage this process, and can never hope to compete with it.