interesting tax article

[flowerseverywhere]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05feldstein.html

"Daniel Feenberg of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation and I have been studying a reform (http://www.nber.org/papers/w16921) that would cap the tax reduction that each taxpayer could get from tax expenditures to 2 percent of his adjusted gross income."

[Mangano's Gold]

This type of approach may (or may not?) be slightly less politically unpalatable than more direct tax increases. It is really just an expansion and simplification of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Limit deductions to bump up effective tax rates. This "2%" version could probably be done with pen and pencil. The AMT pretty much requires software.

The author is wise to frame it as a spending cut, that is since he advocating for it.