Interview with Sirius XM on Immigration Reform
Posts by Arlene Holen
In his post-election acceptance speech, President Obama said “fixing our immigration system” would be one of the first items on his legislative agenda and “we need to seize the moment”. But the president and the congress face a more immediate task: backing away from the “fiscal cliff” and coming up with a plan to avoid the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts scheduled to kick in starting January 1. Easing immigration restrictions for high-skilled workers can help achieve that objective.
Simplifying the complex U.S. tax code is the most direct way to reduce both the public and private costs of complying with the federal income tax, but tax reform is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. Some analysts have argued that return-free filing systems, such as those used in other countries and in the state of California, could substantially reduce the costs for many individual taxpayers with relatively simple returns at little or no net administrative cost to the government.