Америкалық салық реформашылары: Салық саясатын қолдау және үкіметтің ашықтығын қамтамасыз ету

Political advocacy group
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U. S. advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." According to ATR, "The government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized." The organization is known for its "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", which asks candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. The founder and president of ATR is Grover Norquist, a conservative tax activist.

Americans for Tax Reform is a 501(c)(4) organization with 14 employees, finances of $3,912,958, and a membership of 60,000 (as of 2004). It was founded by Grover Norquist in 1985. The associated educational wing is the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, which is classified as a 501(c)(3) research and educational organization. The purpose of both entities is to educate and/or lobby against all tax increases.

Created in 1997, ATR's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, has worked toward seeing each county in the United States commemorate the former president in a "significant" and "public" way, such as the naming of a public building. The project has also supported efforts to place Reagan on the ten dollar bill. The project has also encouraged state governors declare February 6 to be "Ronald Reagan Day"; as of 2006, 40 governors have done so.

Since 2008, ATR has sought to encourage transparency and accountability in government through the Center for Fiscal Accountability. The organization's mission includes supporting the creation of searchable online databases of government spending, among other initiatives. Since 2008 the event has been sponsored by the Center for Fiscal Accountability.

The Property Rights Alliance is a project of Americans for Tax Reform. It produces the International Property Rights Index annually, ranking individual rights to own private property in countries worldwide. The index focuses on three main factors. These include: Legal and Political environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property rights (IPR). In 2021 it published a Trade Barrier Index.

In October 2014 the ATR said that a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that the IRS has not been safeguarding federal tax information properly. The tax information is gathered by the IRS from the tax returns filed in the United States. The IRS provides confidential information to over 280 federal, state and local agencies. According to this TIGTA report the IRS's Internal Revenue Manual does not require on site validation of an agency's ability to protect federal tax information and does not set any guidelines for an agency's background investigation for accessing this information. The TIGTA report surveyed 15 agencies that receive federal tax information and found that none of them conducted sufficient background checks on employees handling the data: one agency conducted national background investigations, four agencies fingerprint employees and only one checks the sex offender registry. Almost half of the agencies hire convicted criminals. Federal tax information provided to other agencies must remain confidential by federal law.

ATR has several special project lines dedicated to specific issues including The American Shareholders Association (ASA), Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF), and The Media Freedom Project (MFP). In October 2010 ATR began mailing fliers to voters in Florida directing them to call Florida governor and Independent candidate for Senate, Charlie Crist. ATR's mailers included pictures of Crist with Obama and quotes from right wing authors.

Shortly after Bill Clinton's 1992 election, ATR headquarters became the site of a weekly, off the record get together of conservatives to coordinate activities and strategy. The "Wednesday Meeting" of the Leave Us Alone Coalition soon became an important hub of conservative political organizing. Participants each week include Republican congressional leaders, right leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and K Street lobbyists. George W. Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president in 1999, and continued to send representatives after his election in 2000. and more internationally, with meetings in Canada, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The significance of the Wednesday meeting has influenced liberals and Democrats to organize similar meetings to coordinate activities about their shared agenda. In 2001, USA Today reported that Rep. Rosa DeLauro initiated such a meeting at the urging of then House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, even holding it on a Wednesday.

The primary policy goal of Americans for Tax Reform is to reduce the percentage of the GDP consumed by the government. ATR states that it "opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle." Americans for Tax Reform seeks to curtail government spending by supporting Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) legislation and transparency initiatives, and opposing Democratic efforts to overhaul health care. ATR is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, which denies the scientific consensus on climate change, saying that "the science of global warming is uncertain, but the negative impacts of global warming policies on consumers are all too real." ATR supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 and continues to favor a comprehensive immigration reform bill. ATR has called for cuts in the defense budget in order to reduce deficit spending.

ATR supported the American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2014 (H. R. 4438; 113th Congress), a bill that would amend the Internal Revenue Code to modify the calculation method and the rate for the tax credit for qualified research expenses that expired at the end of 2013 and would make that modified credit permanent. ATR argued that the bill would be "permanent tax relief for American employers" and pointed to the fact that the credit has been in existence since 1981, but businesses had always faced uncertainty about it due to Congress being forced to renew it 14 times. ATR also argued that businesses already face high corporate income tax rates and that "investment in new technologies and sources of capital is under pressure from other areas of the tax code." This act is designed to reduce the capital gains tax by reducing the tax on capital gains by the standardized inflation rate over the time period in which the capital was invested. ATR argues that by taxing the capital gains without taking into account the gains that occurred simply due to inflation, that investors are being punished for investing over a long period of time. The organization published an open letter to congressman urging them to vote in favor of the bill, which focuses on the harm that occurs to seniors due to the lack of protections that this bill would provide. This bill was introduced on September 28, 2016 into the U. S. Congress and as of November 2, 2016 has not been voted upon.

Tax preparation in the United States is different from that of many other countries in the world, in that the United States does not provide for taxes to be automatically filed by the tax authority. When it comes time to file taxes, the taxpayer must do it themselves personally, or pay to engage the services of a third party tax preparer such as Intuit, even though in most cases the IRS already possesses all the information necessary to correctly file taxes for the taxpayer. For decades, for profit tax preparation companies have lobbied Congress to oppose any efforts that make taxes and tax filing simpler or easier for the tax payer. ATR typically joins these efforts to oppose making taxes easier for Americans. The average taxpayer of Europe spends 15 minutes and no money to file their annual personal taxes, whereas the average American taxpayer spends 8 hours per year and $115 USD. Tax preparers have a vested financial interest in taxes being difficult, with Intuit even going so far as to say in a filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission that federal and local governments making taxes easier to file was a "a continued competitive threat to our business." ATR's interests align with this in that they desire to keep taxes difficult to stoke anti tax sentiment. That is to say, if paying taxes is "too easy", then people will be less likely to fight taxes in the way ATR wants. Norquist and the ATR have publicly argued that things that make tax filing easier on taxpayers constitute an automatic income tax audit on every taxpayer, and serves to keep people uninformed about how taxes work, and was an attempt by the IRS to "socialize all tax preparation in America." While the ATR has argued against efforts that would eliminate reliance on third party preparers, they have also argued that most Americans should not be required to pay for these third party services.

During the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic, the group received assistance between $150,000 and $350,000 in federally backed small business loans from PNC Bank as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The group stated it would allow them to retain 33 jobs. Their loan was seen as notable, since they (and especially Norquist) campaign against excess government spending and are small government advocates. Highlighting the loan amount, Roll Call noted that ATR and ATR Foundation pay Norquist a combined $250,000 annual salary. Norquist also previously criticized the unemployment protection of the CARES Act as "delaying recovery".