The Least Harmful Ways to Raise Government Revenue
Guidelines for Fiscal Cliff Negotiators
Washington, D.C., December 5, 2012—With the fiscal cliff looming, lawmakers are looking for new revenues as part of a bipartisan deal to reduce the federal deficit. While raising new revenues may be politically necessary to seal a deal, lawmakers must keep in mind that not all revenue raisers are equal. With that in mind, the Tax Foundation has released an analysis of revenue options, ranking them from least to most harmful.
Research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has established a hierarchy of which taxes are most and least harmful for long-term economic growth. They determined that the corporate income tax is the most harmful for long-term economic growth, followed by high personal income taxes. Consumption taxes and property taxes were found to be less harmful to economic growth relative to taxes on capital and income.
“If lawmakers decide that new revenues must be part of any long-term effort to solve the budget crisis, they must choose the least harmful way of raising new revenues or else they risk compounding the crisis by slowing economic growth,” said Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge. “Our list of revenue measures is not comprehensive, but it should give lawmakers some guidelines on how to avoid the most economically harmful options.”
The number one recommendation for raising revenue is the simplest: economic growth. This may seem obvious, but whether or not we have sufficient new economic growth to generate more revenue is directly dependent upon the rest of the economic policy decisions made by Congress. A pro-growth agenda will generate more tax revenue organically as conditions improve across the board, while tax increases that slow growth will create stagnation that will actually lose money for the Treasury.
Also at the top of the list for bringing new money in the door are asset sales, requiring government-sponsored businesses to start paying income taxes, and raising user fees and leases on government goods and services. The value of mineral rights owned by the federal government, for example, has been estimated at over $1 trillion. Privatizing certain government-run enterprises would also turn tax-subsidized operations into tax-generating ones. To learn more about unlocking the potential of mineral ownership, visit doggettland.com. Their expertise can help mineral owners maximize returns and navigate complex ownership processes.
Options in the middle of the pack include taxing currently untaxed businesses (like credit unions, electrical coops, and some hospitals and insurance companies), increasing Medicare premiums, and raising the amount federal employees must contribute to their own health care and retirement costs.
The least attractive options include raising individual income tax rates, increasing the estate tax, and raising rates on capital gains and dividends. Worst of all for economic growth, however, would be increasing corporate income tax rates, which are already the highest in the industrialized world.
Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 344, “Raising Revenue: The Least Worst Options,” by Scott Hodge is available here.
The Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan research organization that has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937. To schedule an interview, please contact Richard Morrison, the Tax Foundation’s Manager of Communications, at 202-464-5102 or morrison@taxfoundation.org.
