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For fairer taxes on Social Security
Social Security has been a financial rock for seniors ever since benefits first began flowing in 1940. For decades though, for those above an income threshold, pieces of that rock...
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Taxes in America are unfair to most Americans
For decades, time and again, America’s tax code has been twisted and tweaked to give tax breaks to the top and crumbs (or nothing) to the tens of millions on...
Joint tax returns & the marriage penalty at 75: How and why married couples get a bad deal from the IRS
Another tax season ends today, and returns by the millions have arrived at the Internal Revenue Service marked "Married filing jointly." Few of the filers have any idea that they've...
Beloved, besieged Social Security
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That famous phrase from Charles Dickens sums up the double-edged sword hanging over the roughly 63 million Americans...
Our regressive tax code gets worse
An extraordinarily cruel pandemic has been extraordinarily good to the rich, especially the super-rich. New billionaires have been coined at the rate of one every 30 hours. For those already...
The federal tax code can inch toward fairness
A proposed tax reform — left for dead in the ruins of Build Back Better — isn't dead after all. In fact it could still happen, in two separate ways....
Joe Manchin’s good, progressive idea
Amazing but true: One of the best ideas to pay for Build Back Better came from Sen. Joe Manchin. Yes, Manchin is reviled by many progressives for being a big...
Biden’s overdue tax corrective: A seismic shift could be underway, even with Dems in Congress buckling on some big priorities
The bad news is that taxes in America are tilted in favor of the rich. The best news is that we could be only weeks away from a tilt in...
When the rich don’t pay, the rest of us do
More than 30 years ago, a real estate bigwig in Manhattan (no, not him) was convicted of tax evasion. Her name was Leona Helmsley, the famous Queen of Mean. Even...
Investing in kids pays real dividends
A weary America is suffering through the worst public health crisis in more than a century. Covid-19 has taken more than 300,000 lives. Parts of the economy have effectively shut...