The Proposed Tax Changes

The Proposed 2013 Tax Changes Are Only Weeks Away

(SXXW28G5BWN3) The powers that be are still trying to work out how they can forestall the fiscal cliff but everyone should be prepared for the consequences.

English: President Barack Obama speaks to a jo...
English: President Barack Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress regarding health care reform (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Congress and President Obama are wondering how they can ward off the impending fiscal cliff, in a matter of days the tax cuts that were implemented by Bush will come to an end and spending will be slashed as the year comes to an end, no one knows what this round of cuts will bring.

J.D. Foster a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation feels that the proposed changes will affect everyone, income tax rates will rise, payroll tax will shoot up and capital gains and dividend taxes will be higher. The proposed changes are going to have an impact on child tax credit too; so many families are going to be badly hit.

Taxation experts feel that the proposed tax changes could be delayed if the powers that be do not come to an agreement in the next month. Under normal circumstances tax filing starts at the beginning of the year but as things stand the IRS and tax-prep companies cannot complete tax forms.

This has an impact on employers who may need to make adjustments to payroll taxes when the proposed 2013 tax changes are implemented. In short this could mean that tax preparers will struggle to be ready in time. The government will find that their revenue is delayed and taxpayers may find that refunds are paid out far later.

Obama’s Tax Reform Plan Brings Out The Skeptics

Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary, outlined The Obama tax reform proposal to overhaul taxes on business as well as eliminating a few dozen loopholes for the 2012 Taxes. The plan is to bring the corporate tax rate down to the 28 percentile. As Obama revealed his plan, some of his critics do not believe that the cuts are not significant enough to be effective.

The proposal includes a minimum tax on foreign money earnings, though there were no details offered on how the plan would play out.

Geithner said in an interview that they wanted to restore the concept and policies in which American businesses gain success or fail based on the quality and worth of their product rather than the creativity of their tax law engineers.

Geithner went on to say that overhauling taxes will not be implemented for this year

Curtis Dubay, the tax policy senior analyst for Heritage Foundation, expressed limited optimism that this policy could be put in effect this year due to the fact it is an election year. He feared that the law might make things worse rather than better if it passed.

For William Gale, staff member of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the proposal shared today demonstrates the difficulty in implementing major tax legislation on corporations due to the very difficult process of determining the current business income of the United States.

According to Gale, sometimes income gets taxed multiple times at the individual level of taxation and only once at the corporate tax level. There are even times when taxes are missed entirely.

One of the major goals of the proposal is to eliminate the inefficiency of taxing businesses and to make certain that the process is fair.

Geithner has been in contact with D-Mont. Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Republican Utah representative. He hopes to meet with these two individuals in order to discuss the tax plan and establish a consensus.