Kamala Harris outlines economic priorities on the last night of the DNC

Among economic themes, Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the need to protect Social Security and Medicare, and a tax cut for middle-income households.
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Fact-checking the economic claims in Donald Trump’s convention speech

Alan Rappeport, economic policy reporter at The New York Times, examines the former president's assertions about inflation, taxes and energy.
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Tax breaks are popular. They also cost the federal government more than $1 trillion a year.

May 24, 2024
In the debate over the debt and deficit, experts say tax breaks that skew toward the wealthy deserve as close a look as government spending.
“The IRS has basically been turned into not just a revenue-collection agency, but also basically a welfare agency having to give people goodies and tax breaks for all sorts of different things that they do," economist Gerald Prante says.
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How corporate lobbying changed the 2017 tax overhaul

Jan 3, 2020
Corporate lobbyists won big under the Treasury Department's rules and regulations to implement the bill.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin in 2017.
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The budget deficit last topped $1 trillion in 2012, a very different time

Sep 13, 2019
Back then, the economy was struggling its way out of recession. Now? Not so much.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday the government deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time in seven years. Above, the Treasury Department building in Washington, D.C.
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How tax cuts get "paid for"

Jul 11, 2019
Can a tax cut pay for itself? We dive into the language used by the president's chief economic adviser.
Who paid for the beer?
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Oxfam says tax cuts have benefited the rich

Jan 21, 2019
Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, released a report Friday on how the world’s billionaires and poor people are doing economically. And the short answer is: the former are up while the latter are down. Oxfam crunched the income and wealth numbers based on data from Forbes’ annual billionaires list and Credit Suisse’s “Wealth Databook.” The […]

For public good, not for profit.

IRS releases final rules on deductions for "pass-through" businesses

Jan 18, 2019
You won't find a lot of simple yes-and-no answers in the 247-page document.
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What business investment says about our economy's future

Nov 28, 2018
After the tax law passed last year, Republicans argued that companies would take their tax savings and make big investments in themselves — plants, equipment, trucks, that sort of thing. But over the last year, there are signs that business investment is slowing. GM’s plans to shut down five plants are just the latest example. Economists […]

As corporate earnings season rolls on, winners and losers emerge

Tariffs are costing some companies plenty. Others are immune, at least for now, and benefiting from tax cuts.
“We have the highest prices in the world right now for aluminum and steel,” said Kristin Dziczek, a vice president at the Center for Automotive Research. Above, Ford Mustangs are assembled at a plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, in 2004.
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