On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Senate Republicans applied pressure to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) in September to suppress a report finding that lowering marginal tax rates for the wealthiest Americans had no effect on economic growth or job creation. The Times stated: “The pressure applied to the research service comes amid a broader Republican effort to raise questions about research and statistics that were once trusted as nonpartisan and apolitical.” The Democratic party has resurfaced this report and wants the world to see the hidden agenda.
The CRS report, by researcher Thomas Hungerford, concluded:
The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.
See Huffington Post
Congressional Research Service Report On Tax Cuts For Wealthy Suppressed By GOP was originally published on kissrichmond.com
