TAX CUTS….Matt Yglesias on the stimulus bill:
It strikes me as indefensible that a stimulus package featuring hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts doesn’t include any FICA provisions. Payroll tax cuts wouldn’t be my first choice of stimulus measures, but there’s a strong case for including some tax-side measures in the package and they’d probably be my first choice of tax cuts to include.
Agreed, but isn’t the $500/$1000 refundable tax credit in the current package essentially the same thing? Technically it’s a credit against income tax, but in practice, since it’s refundable, it’s a flat tax rebate for everyone who’s employed, which makes it roughly the same as a temporary payroll tax cut. The only real difference is that a flat tax credit is relatively more generous to the working poor than a payroll tax cut — which is a good thing — and internally it gets charged to the general fund rather than the Social Security trust fund — which doesn’t matter one way or the other. What’s not to like?
