With the 113th Congress in full swing, Dennis Ross (R-FL) has introduced H.R. 243, the so-called “Bowles-Simpson Plan of Lowering America’s Debt Act”. This is basically the same as the bill he introduced last year, and features the same ridiculous proposal to raise taxes on U.S. persons abroad to pay for tax cuts for Homeland corporations. For more details, see this previous post of ours.
What’s mildly interesting here is that just days after Ross introduced his bill, the Joint Committee on Taxation published its “Estimate of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2012–2017” (hat tip: TaxProf Blog). Their estimate of the “cost” of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion has fallen significantly compared to last year: US$5.9 billion for 2012, down by more than 20% against their US$7.4 billion estimate for 2011. So where does that leave Ross’ bill and the revenue projections he used to justify all his tax goodies for Homelanders and their corporations?