In France, unemployment contributions are collected through a payroll tax, not a layoff tax.

Lowering the tax burden on firms including the payroll tax would also be useful.

How complicated would it be to shift from a payroll tax to a layoff tax?

But Congress failed to approve a 50 cut in employers payroll taxes a business tax cut that many Republicans favored in the past and that ranks high on budgetary effectiveness.

President Bush's tax cut, however, squandered the surplus.

The payroll tax paid by employees is 6.65 (employers pay the same rate), and is in addition to the personal income tax.

For example, we can choose how much to collect via a general income tax, a payroll tax, a consumption tax (such as a sales or value added tax), and so on.

Payroll tax relief and spending on programs like food stamps and unemployment compensation are much more effective.

The tax cut has probably been saved rather than spent.

So employment protection reform should involve a shift from a payroll tax to a layoff tax, accompanied by a reduction in the role of judges.

Minimum wage increases, for example, counteract income tax credits and lower payroll taxes aimed at encouraging youth employment.

At the very least, to keep the economy on course for 2.5 growth this year, the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits proposed by Obama should be extended through the end of the year.

Payroll personnel would be cut, resulting in late payments to wartime vendors, and legal and policy support would be disrupted.

Who s Who on Putin s Payroll?

Greenspan s irresponsible support of that tax cut was critical to its passage.

But the most important part of the deal to avert the fiscal cliff was the restoration of the efficient payroll tax.

But the payroll tax cut (which put more than 100 billion into the pockets of ordinary Americans) was not renewed, and surely business, anticipating the contractionary effects down the line, will be even more reluctant to lend.

It is still not clear what led Greenspan to support the tax cut.

A more effective stimulus would speed up spending that needs to be done anyway. Or cut taxes to change the marginal calculus of firms on layoffs and consumers on spending for example, by suspending the payroll tax on firms and workers for a year or suspending part or all of the sales tax or national value added tax.

One of the most efficient tax raising methods is the US payroll tax, for which the marginal tax rate is close to the average rate (because deductions are absent and there is little graduation in the rate structure).

That is why the energy tax must be imposed as a tax substitution, with income or payroll taxes simultaneously reduced to keep real resource transfers to government at a constant level.

The rest of the EU should not only follow suit they should also cut income and payroll taxes and liberalize their labor markets.

Yet remarkably, Bush asked for, and got, a reckless tax cut for the rich.

Reducing these fees would, in effect, be a tax cut for the world's poorest.

More promising is the 150 billion tax cut that the US Congress recently enacted.

There has been no tax cut of any significance, and pension reform is still waiting.

Of course, some believe an income tax cut is precisely what the French economy needs.

Second, a large tax cut hampers the ability of the Fed to ease interest rates.

George W. Bush s proposals for a massive tax cut are risky gambling on large future budget surpluses that might never appear, and gambling that a sharp tax cut won t trigger a jump in interest rates.

This serious revenue boost was not counted in standard reports, because the payroll tax holiday for 2011 2012 had always been treated legally as temporary.

And this amount partly reflects the fact that employed people who collect Social Security and Medicare are subject to the payroll tax that finances them.

We now have less than full employment in the sense that the payroll tax encourages older workers to work fewer hours than they otherwise would.

Suppose that the government gives a tax cut in order to increase consumers take home pay.

In 1991, marginal tax rates were cut by 10 20 for large parts of the population.

President elect Bush talks about his 1.3 trillion tax cut proposal as an insurance policy against recession.

The proceeds can be divided equally between workers, local authorities, a general tax cut and the central government.

Others say the impediment is the entire overgrown public sector and the solution is to cut tax rates.

Therefore, cutting the payroll tax rate in 2011 2012 and making the rate schedule more graduated (on the Medicare side) were mistakes from the standpoint of efficient taxation.

Moreover, because of the complex rules that govern the level of Social Security benefits, the older worker who pays this payroll tax is likely to receive no extra benefits.

Cut. Cut. That won't do.

As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax relief for the wealthy.

In principle, one could cut other taxes to offset the effects of a carbon tax, neutralizing the revenue effects.

3,000 employees. He kept every one of them on the payroll.

Instead, Obama could, for example, have suspended the payroll tax for a year, getting money directly into people s pockets quickly and decreasing the need for firms to lay off workers.

uncertainties arising from America's looming fiscal deficit, due to macroeconomic mismanagement and a tax cut that the country cannot afford