Obama's Budget Is Full of New Taxes

NCPA, February 4, 2015

President Obama's 2016 budget calls for $1 trillion in new taxes. Some of those tax proposals -- such as his call for raising the capital gains tax -- have received a lot of attention, but others have been overlooked. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute, identifies several of the president's tax proposals that pundits have failed to focus on. These include:

• Currently, donors to colleges can deduct 80 percent of charitable donations from their taxes if the donations allow them to purchase tickets in advance. The president intends to bring the federal government $2.5 billion by disallowing such deductions. Furchtgott-Roth says the proposal will merely cause schools to create informal donation systems outside of the IRS's reach.
• The president wants to limit contributions to tax-advantaged retirement accounts in order to bring the federal government $26 billion.
• The president calls for raising tax credits for "advanced technology vehicles" worth $3.3 billion. Furchtgott-Roth says the credits would end up going to natural gas-powered vehicles, which she calls a "waste of taxpayer dollars because the technology will likely be adopted anyway." If not, she says, "[i]t probably isn't worth the investment."

NCPA Senior Fellow Pam Villarreal said the president's proposed tax increases are intended to mask the size of the federal deficit.

Source: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, "Here are five Obama tax proposals that make no sense," MarketWatch, February 3, 2015.