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October 15, 2007
Volume 5, No. 16
A Chilling Read: The Tax Expenditures ListEvery Sunday, the Washington Post publishes a book review section covering the latest novels and works of nonfiction. The Post has yet to feature a recently published tome authored by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation entitled Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2007-2011. But if it had, the book would have been listed under the heading "Scary Reading." The Joint Tax Committee publication is scary because it clearly lays out exactly where the money is that is not currently taxed—but could be if Congress and the President decided to change course. That's what a tax expenditure is—a revenue loss to the government because of some special provision in the tax law granted by Congress. Here's a list of major tax expenditures that relate to the business activities of NAIFA members and the revenue loss associated with each over the period 2007-2011:
The take away from this Joint Tax work of nonfiction is that the products and services that NAIFA members use in their daily work with clients receive a lot of special treatment. As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-IL) observed back in the 1960s: "A billion here, a billion there, after a while you got some real money." And it's all neatly laid out on the printed page. How is the book used? Say you're the federal government and you are running a budget deficit, but you want to stop running a deficit. You can cut spending or increase taxes—or some combination of the two. Or, say, you want to increase the funding for a program favored by the majority in Congress but don't want to increase the deficit. Again, you have the same choices. Making choices is never easy in Congress, but depending on the political environment, raising taxes on a particular group is usually easier than cutting overall federal spending. That's the robbing Peter to pay Paul principal. Just ask the tobacco industry. The bulk of the funds ($35 billion over five years) needed to pay for the congressional plan to beef up the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP) would come from an increase in tobacco taxes. Say what you will about tobacco, but the point is clear. If Congress wants to do something, and it needs money to do it, it knows just where to find it. It's all in the book.Back to October 15, 2007, NAIFA Frontline |
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| NAIFA's Law and Government Relations Department |
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