As reported by Grant Thornton, the Obama administration submitted a budget proposal on Feb. 13 with well over 100 proposed tax provisions that would result in trillions of dollars of revenue changes. The tax platform in the budget proposal is largely an amalgamation of provisions from earlier legislative initiatives and previous budgets, but it does include several new proposals affecting high-income individuals and multinational taxpayers.
The most significant new position may be the President’s call to return the top dividend tax rate to 39.6%. Last year’s budget proposed preserving the equivalent treatment of capital gains and qualified dividends, with the top rate for both increasing from a 15% rate to just 20%.