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April 17, 2006
The Honorable John W. Snow
Secretary of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20220
Dear Mr. Secretary:
A column in the April 14 edition of the New York Times by Paul Krugman brought attention to a document, titled Tax Relief Kit that was issued by the Office of Tax Policy in conjunction with the tax filing season. This document highlights the benefits of the Economic Growth and Tax Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 and touts that “every taxpayer who paid income taxes will get tax relief this year.” This may be true, but the document does not include the amount or percent of tax cuts by income group. In fact, analysis of your data concludes that the top one percent of taxpayers will receive 32 percent of the tax cuts in 2006.
I am requesting that you make these numbers available. As Congress continues to debate whether these tax cuts should be extended, it would be helpful to make all the information on the distribution of the tax cuts among different income brackets available to the public.
The Tax Relief Kit includes a table on page four titled Projected Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income in 2006. The table shows that with the tax cuts those in the top one percent will see a very slight increase of 0.1 percent in their share of taxes and taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent will face a 0.6 percent decrease in their share of taxes. The document makes the argument that a large share of individual income taxes paid has shifted to higher income taxpayers. However, the document does not include the percentage of tax cuts received by these taxpayers. According to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, the top one percent of taxpayers will receive an average tax cut of $39,000 in 2006 and the middle 20 percent will receive an average tax cut of only $748.
The description of the chart indicates that nearly all of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect. However, one of the more costly tax provisions, the repeal of the estate tax, does not occur until 2010 and this tax cut benefits those with estates of more than $3.5 million. In addition, two provisions of the 2001 tax cut bill that only benefit high-income households did not begin to take effect until 2006 but will not be fully in effect until 2010.
The information included in the Tax Relief Kit is misleading. It appears that you have this data readily available, given its role in preparing the Tax Relief Kit. I request this data to be made available as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
John F. Kerry
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