Quick point of clarification on an otherwise-distracting day: the House and Senate are set to vote on a bill involving transportation and student loan interest rates. One of the pay-fors in this bill allows companies with defined benefit pensions to fund them at a slower rate than the law currently requires them to. According to JCT, this action results in about $20 billion in higher tax revenues over the next decade.
Why is that? When companies have to expend less money to fund pension plans, that means their tax deduction for pension contributions goes down. As a result, their taxable income goes up. As a result of that, their tax liability goes up, and hence the revenue-positive JCT score.
So, the higher tax revenue is an indirect effect from a non-tax law change by Congress. This is not a legislated tax increase. The higher revenues are merely a side effect of a change to pension funding laws.
Note that this clarification only speaks to the question of whether this positive revenue score indicates a tax increase in the bill, not to the merits of the bill itself.
on Thursday, June 28, 2012 2:44 PM EDTTo follow Ryan Ellis's RSS feed click here. To follow them on Twitter, their handle is @ryanlellis