Romney, Obama and the long, partisan road to tax reform

When it comes to tax reform, there is a lot of common ground, but still many differences, between Romney's approach and Obama's approach, Rogers writes.

By Diane Lim Rogers,?Guest blogger / October 1, 2012

In this April 2011 file photo, Max Martinez, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, tries to alert motorists on the final day to file taxes. A recent conversation between Obama advisors and Romney advisors is a good indicator of the potential for achieving bipartisan tax reform consistent with not just ?growth? goals but fairness and fiscal responsibility goals as well, Rogers writes.

Tony Dejak/AP/File

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Last week as part of the??Strengthening of America-Our Children?s Future? project?that the Concord Coalition is a co-sponsor of, a forum was held in New York on the topic of??pro-growth tax reform.??Harvard economics professor and Romney adviser, Martin Feldstein, joined former Treasury secretary and Obama adviser, Lawrence Summers, to discuss what they consider ?pro-growth? tax policy.? A preview of their discussion was provided by former Senator Sam Nunn?s co-anchoring of the CNBC ?Squawk Box? show earlier that morning; inthis segment Feldstein and Nunn discuss?the potential for bipartisanship in tax reform, but Feldstein is also asked to react to comments that Summers had made on the show just before.? (This latter issue will be most appreciated by those who have been following the Tax Policy Center?s analysis of the Romney plan and Feldstein?s subsequent critique of the TPC analysis and defense of the Romney tax reform plan.)

Skip to next paragraph Diane Lim Rogers

'EconomistMom' (Diane Lim Rogers) is Chief Economist of the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan, non-profit organization which advocates for fiscal responsibility, and the mom of four (amazing) kids to whom she dedicates her work. She?s been blogging since Mother?s Day 2008.

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At the event, Feldstein and Summers made it clear that when it comes to the notion of what is ?pro-growth tax reform,? there is a lot of common ground between economists who favor the Rs and economists who favor the Ds.? Here are what I heard as some of the?main points of agreement between Feldstein and Summers?(what Summers referred to as the ?structure that Marty and I have converged on?):?

1. ?Pro-growth tax reform? means structuring the tax system to encourage longer-term expansion in the productive capacity (or ?supply side?) of the economy.
2. This suggests that a broader, more even tax base, which supports relatively low marginal tax rates, is the best way to raise necessary revenue with the least distortion to those supply-side economic decisions (how much to work, how much to save, how much to invest in human or physical capital).
3. A first priority to follow the ?broadening the tax base? strategy is to reduce existing ?tax expenditures? that are considered inefficient and/or unfair.? Tax expenditures are economically equivalent to government spending programs and make government bigger than indicated by the levels of direct spending. (Cutting revenues by increasing tax expenditures grows, rather than shrinks, the size of government.)
4. Tax expenditures could be reduced in a variety of ways that don?t have to target particular sectors of the economy (could be done in across-the-board, broad-brush ways?e.g., Feldstein likes the idea of capping the total amount to a percentage of gross income) and can be done in a progressive manner, where tax burdens are increased relatively more on higher-income households (e.g., the Obama budget proposal to limit itemized deductions and even other tax expenditures to the 28% rate).
5. Tax reform does need to?raise?revenue (relative to the policy-extended, ?business as usual? baseline, and even before any ?dynamic scoring? type effects are accounted for) in order to contribute to deficit reduction and (therefore) be ?pro-growth.?
6. But ?pro-growth tax policy? is a longer-term goal focused on mainly the supply side of the economy; we cannot immediately raise tax burdens in ways that would threaten putting our economy back in recession (by reducing demand for goods and services too severely).

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/dhtEfYQfYmw/Romney-Obama-and-the-long-partisan-road-to-tax-reform

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