Ore. Sen. Wyden gives tax overhaul top priority

[ProSense]

Ore. Sen. Wyden gives tax overhaul top priority

By JEFF BARNARD

Sen. Ron Wyden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday his first priority in the job will be overhauling the nation’s tax system, which he called a ‘‘dysfunctional, rotten mess.’’

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Wyden said he plans to start the overhaul by pushing a bill filed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to extend some 50 tax breaks that expired in December for such things as research and development, renewable energy and mortgage debt and use the extensions as a bridge to comprehensive changes.

Wyden would also like to see the standard deduction tripled to $30,000, so for ‘‘a middle-class person making $50,000 or $60,000, $30,000 would be off limits’’ for taxation.

Wyden said he’s already started working on revamping the income tax code with Sen. Dan Coates, R-Ind.

- more -

http://www.boston.com/business/personal-finance/2014/02/07/ore-sen-wyden-gives-tax-overhaul-top-priority/4RV2CjTVqsTYuvqVDDgzZM/story.html

Here's a 2011 fact sheet on Wyden-Coats:

http://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Wyden-Coats%20Two%20Pager%20FINAL1.pdf

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[PowerToThePeople]

2. Big rec

30k standard exemption would be great. Gross salary is a joke. I remember before being done with school, it seemed I would be so well off with the starting salaries out of college. Once you actually got them, it was different. You get in that tax range where you get hit much harder. By the time all was said and done (higher taxes, student loans), you were actually worse off than you were before school.

[ProSense]

6. Yes,

"30k standard exemption would be great."

...that's good, but this part of the proposal suck.

Positions American Companies to Compete in the Global Economy – Currently, the United States’ corporate income tax rate is the second highest in the industrialized world, putting American corporations at a competitive disadvantage in the international marketplace. Wyden-Coats works to correct this, by reducing the top corporate tax rate and replacing the existing six corporate rates and eight brackets with a single flat rate of 24 percent. This adjustment will ensure American corporation spay a more competitive tax rate than their counterparts in many of the countries the U.S. trades with, including Canada, Germany and France. Wyden-Coats will allow U.S. businesses a one-time, low-tax repatriation of foreign earnings to help them transition to the reforms of Wyden-Coats and to bring money home to help grow the economy.

[TheMathieu]

3. Long overdue. nt

[sheshe2]

4. Thank you Ore. Sen. Wyden

Long overdue!

[ProSense]

5. Kick! n/t

[davidpdx]

7. I think it is great that Wyden is the Senate Finance Committee Chair now

It's been a long time since Oregon had a senator that was high ranking enough to get on one of the more meaningful committees. I hope he's going to push to get some things done.