TPC: Obama’s Tax Proposals Yield $4.9 Trillion (Not the Claimed $1.1 Trillion) Shortfall

The Tax Policy Center has released a detailed 49-page analysis of the key tax proposals in President Obama’s 2011 budget:

Separate discussions below describe each of the proposals including current law, proposed changes, and, when appropriate, the distributional effects. …

The budget assumes a baseline in which the 2001-2003 tax cuts are permanent (including the estate tax at its 2009 level), the exemption in the alternative minimum tax (AMT) is permanently indexed for inflation from its 2009 level, and that temporary expansions of refundability of the child tax credit and of the earned income credit are permanent. Those provisions would reduce revenues by $3.8 trillion over the 2010-2020 period. TPC’s analysis measures the impact of the tax proposals not against the administration baseline but rather against a current law baseline that assumes the 2001-2003 tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011 and that the AMT exemption maintains its permanent level. Against that baseline, the administration’s tax proposals would cause much greater revenue losses than official budget estimates show [$4.9 trillion v. $1.1 trillion].

That’s quite a difference…$3.8 trillion…fuck!