The Tax Reform Act Of 1986

In the United States today there are millions of corporations in many different industries. All of them must abide by the current taxation rules and regulations that have been set by IRS and congress. The Internal Revenue Code, which was originally founded in 1939, set the foundation for the codification that we have in place today. The code arranged all Federal Tax provisions in a logical order and placed them in a separate part of the federal status. Over the years, congress has updated and amended the tax code in 1954, in 1986 Tax Reform Act, and is constantly updating the code due to its importance in assessing judicial and administrative decisions. The

The first proposal to impose an income tax on Americans occurred during the War of 1812. After two years of war, the federal government had accumulated a whopping $100 million of debt. To fund the war against Britain, the government doubled the rates of its major source of revenue, customs duties on imports, which obstructed trade and ended up yielding less revenue than the previous lower rates. At the height of the war, excise taxes were imposed on goods and commodities, housing, slaves and land were taxed. Finally when the war ended in 1816, these taxes were abolished. A high tariff was then passed to retire the accumulated war debt. Thankfully, the notion of an income tax was conquered (Young, 2004). However, the thought of the income tax reappeared as an idea to fund the Union armies in the war to prevent the secession of the Confederacy. The war was expensive, costing on average $1,750,000 a day. Struggling to meet these expenses, the Republican Congress borrowed heavily, doubled tariff rates, sold off public lands, imposed a maze of licensing fees, increased old excise tax rates and created new excise taxes. But none of this was enough to fund the debt (Young, 2004)..

President Reagan worked skillfully to pass his legislation in congress. He was successful in passing legislation with a Democrat majority house, including increasing the defense budget at a time when the Soviet Union's power was waning. Congress passed many of Reagan's proposed cuts in domestic programs. During his presidency, much of the funding of government programs were cut. President Reagan also was able to get many major tax cuts passed in Congress. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was one of those major tax cuts passed. The law simplified the tax code by reducing the number of tax brackets to four. The law also lowered the top tax rate from 50% to 28% and raised the bottom tax rate from 11% to 15%. Because of this bill, six million poor Americans

The tax policy in the United States is very confusing. When the tax policy was originally written in 1913 it was four hundred pages. Now, over the past ninety one years, that tax policy has evolved to over 72,000 pages. Since the tax code has become so lengthy and nearly impossible to understand, the topic of tax reform has been in the minds of many. Although, most barely think about tax reform until tax season. It is a controversial subject due to the impact a change in tax code would have on the American people. The two most popular and widely known stakeholders in this debate are the two major political parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans. The two parties share absolutely no common ground on the subject of

In 1861, Lincoln levied the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Needing cash with which to fund the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.00. The wording of the Revenue Act was broadly written to define income as a monetary gain derived from any kind of property, or from any specialized trade, employment, or vocation carried on in the United States or elsewhere or from any source whatever. (A&E Television Networks, 2014)

First of all, the marginal tax cut was one of the most significant policy in the governing of President Reagan. Starting from 1981, government reduced individual tax (the top tax rate was reduced from 70% to 50 %) and Windfall profit tax. As the Tax reform act of 1986 published, the tax rate of wealthiest Americans was decline to 28 % and corporation tax was decreased to 34%.” In addition, as marginal tax rate for wealthy people decreasing, personal exemption amount increased from $1,080 to $2,000. That means,

Capital gain taxation in America has been around since the Civil war when a tax on income began and a rise in taxing capital gain started. After many repeals and acts about taxation, the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment came about which allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census (gov.) Between 1913 and 1922 taxes on capital gain ranged from the top rate of 7 percent and 12.5 percent being held at least two years. (Capital gain tax) Next came the Tax Reform Acts of 1969 and 1976. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 set a 10 percent minimum tax not including gains, and put a limit on alternative tax up to $ 50,000 of gains. (Capital gain tax) The next Act of 1976 further increased capital gain taxes by increasing the tax rate to 15 percent. By 1978 the maximum tax rate reached almost 50 percent, which caused for Congress to reduce capital gains tax

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 created a combined estate and gift tax rate of 40% while raising the estate tax exemption to $5.43 million in 2015. The gift exclusion stays at $14,000 in 2015. These changes generate some estate-planning benefits that most people haven’t yet realize. For example, many wealthy people didn 't bother trying to minimize capital gains in the past because the lower tax rate of 15% was better than paying 50% in estate taxes. Now people can benefit by choosing which assets they keep until death more carefully. Appreciated assets can be held until death and might fall within the $5.43 million exemption. This could be especially important when realizing capital gains could be subject to a higher, nearly 24%

The Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986 focuses on the employment of illegal aliens. This act does make it unlawful for a person or businesses to hire, recruit, or refer for a fee, individuals who are not legally eligible for employment in the U.S (Mitchell, 1999). This means that an employer should not hire an individual who is not eligible for work in the U.S. In this case the employer should not have hired illegal aliens to begin with. Having them employed with the company goes against the act.

The Constitution Act of 1982, or more commonly known as, “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” constitutionally entrenched fundamental civil liberties, which have protected Canadians from both federal and provincial legislative imposition. Since the Charter’s inception, however, Canada’s judiciary has been placed under great criticism and scrutiny due to the fact that the courts were believed to have been given legislative powers that rivaled both the federal and provincial legislatures. Through Judicial Review, the Supreme Court of Canada was given the task to interpret the charter since that wording of the legal document itself was vague enough to warrant interpretation, and hence, gave critics a reason to believe that supreme court justices have been the power to legislate without any political or public recourse. Unfortunately, as a result of these criticisms, various public notions, such as appointed and not duly elected Supreme Court justices with the ability to legislate, became the main focus in questioning whether the supreme court’s institutional functions were legitimate, and in tandem with the principles of a free and democratic society.

Throughout history, taxation on United States citizens has proven to be a necessary component of a growing economy as means of generating revenue for the federal budget. The federal budget funds the many government programs implemented to keep the disabled, elderly, and unemployed from falling bellow the poverty level. Unfortunately, this fund is not always available when catastrophic evens, such as an economic recession, deplete the revenue coming in and create a budget deficit. In order to regenerate money coming in and replace the deficit, the government calls on money gained from taxes. What happens when tax money is already appropriated to other programs? A tax reform. A tax increase has many times been the

The American people are in the presence of the highest tax burden in American history; taxes represent a larger share of the U.S. economy than ever before (Armey 2). After World War II, the average family sent only about three percent of its income to Washington. The same family today gives 24 percent of its income to the federal tax collector (Mitchell 1, 9). Once state and local taxes are added to the federal take, taxes make up the biggest slice of the average family's budget. As Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation shows in Figure 1, the typical American family now pays more of its budget in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, transportation and shelter combined (Mitchell 1, 10).

If the United States are going to tax people, then they should tax everyone fairly. Corporate welfare can be as close to those, who shouldn't receive food stamps, or people like panhandlers, who pay no taxes for the money they receive. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, “American Fortune 500 corporations are avoiding up to $600 billion in U.S. federal income taxes by holding more than $2.1 trillion” of retained profits offshore, which they identify as “permanently reinvested” to stay away from a tax liability. Millionaires and Billionaires as well regularly pay less in taxes than a middle class American. Huffington Post states that millionaires and billionaires benefit from tax loopholes, deductions, deferrals and other types of accounts. This show’s corruptness and unfairness because the 1 percent continues to profit while the 99 percent pay most of all the taxes. The 99 percent of the people struggle to pay the bills while the 1 percent worries about what sports car they will buy next. In addition, when Wall Street fails, the taxpayers have to pay for their damages. For example, Millions of taxpayers lost their jobs due to the 2008-2009 Wall Street collapse, yet they are unwilling to pay additional taxes to pay for education and healthcare for the people who bailed them out. The United States should eliminate corporate welfare until they agree

In his article “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich”, Warren Buffett criticizes the fact that billionaires in United States actually pay less percentages of taxes than those working-classes. Buffett believes the government needs to stop protecting the “super-rich”.

The United States is in a recession; it has been facing some of the worse economic times since the Great Depression in the 1930’s. One option to fix the economy is to change the corporate tax rate. To lower it or to raise it, that is the question economists have been speculating. America's high corporate tax rate and worldwide system of taxation discourages U.S. companies from sending their foreign-source revenue home, which makes U.S. companies defenseless to foreign acquisition from the international opponents (Camp). Corporations and United States citizens have been fighting for a tax reform, which would hopefully help the American economy; either by lowering the corporate tax, or by raising the tax.