NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — As the “tax the rich” debate rages in Washington D.C., some states are turning to their wealthiest residents to bring in much-needed revenue.

The governors of the two largest Democratic states want rich folks to help close budget gaps. And Democratic lawmakers elsewhere are preparing to do battle with Republican leaders to blunt budget cuts by instituting a millionaire tax.

This marks a shift from last year, when state leaders largely shied away from raising taxes in general. Several cash-strapped states, including Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon, let their millionaire taxes lapse.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Close to 15% of federal taxes — or $385 billion — went unpaid in 2006, according to new estimates by the IRS.

That’s the net tax gap number — meaning what didn’t get paid even after the $65 billion the IRS managed to collect through audits.

And it’s the closest proxy policymakers have to the country’s annual revenue shortfall, said Mark Luscomb, the principal federal tax analyst at CCH, a tax information publisher.

What’s driving the shortfall? A whopping 84% of the total tax gap is due to underreporting of income by corporations, small businesses and individuals.

The last few years have been tough on many Americans who work in the manufacturing industry, but they haven’t been nearly as tough on the manufacturers’ profits.

U.S. manufacturers have seen a steady uptick in profits since bottoming out in late 2008, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

After-tax profits for U.S. manufacturers totaled $159.7 billion in the second quarter, according to the Census Bureau. That’s nearly triple what they were in the second quarter of 2009, when corporations were just starting to emerge from the deep economic blows of 2008. The data is seasonally adjusted.

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One of the proposals for keeping Social Security afloat is to simply ask for more money.

It turns out, not that many taxpayers would have to pay up.

A new analysis from the Center for Economic and Policy Research finds that less than 6 percent of workers would be affected if the government lifted the cap on Social Security taxes and applied it to earnings above $106,800.

Global investors overwhelmingly support President Barack Obama’s proposed tax increase for those earning annual incomes of $1 million or more in an effort to reduce the deficit.

By a margin of 63 percent to 32 percent, respondents in a Bloomberg Global Poll approved of the president’s proposal, known as the “Buffett rule” in a nod to Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., who has said it is wrong that he pays a smaller share of his income in taxes than does his secretary.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The White House will propose a new tax rate for people earning more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings in taxes as middle-income Americans, administration and White House officials told CNN on Sunday.

Called the Buffett Rule, the proposal will be part of a comprehensive deficit reduction plan President Barack Obama will unveil on Monday, according to a senior administration official and White House sources who spoke on condition of not being identified. The information was first reported by The New York Times.

The plan’s name refers to billionaire Warren Buffett, who has complained that wealthy Americans like himself pay less than their fair share in taxes under the current tax code.

FORTUNE — The Congressional champions of a corporate tax holiday for multinationals with more than $1 trillion parked abroad are taking a curious approach to advancing their cause.

The concept is simple enough: give tech, pharmaceutical and energy giants a temporary break from the 35% top corporate rate so they can bring home loads of their overseas cash at a bargain basement rate of 5.25%. The companies could then pump that money into investments and hiring, boosting the economic recovery.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Dragged before Congress as gas prices explode at the pump, oil executives mounted a vigorous defense of their business practices on Thursday — pushing back against plans to eliminate tax breaks for the “big five” oil and gas companies.

All five executives acknowledged rising prices at the pump, but much of their testimony focused on the impact of a plan floated by Senate Democrats that would eliminate a raft of tax breaks.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — When it comes to taxes, do the rich pay their fair share?

The answer, of course, is subjective since “fair” is not an absolute concept and tax data, depending how it’s sliced, can tell different stories.Those who say the rich pay their fair share point to the fact that the
top 1% of taxpayers end up paying almost as much in federal income tax
(and some years even more) as the bottom 95% combined.

After a brief few years of budget surpluses at the end of the Clinton administration, lawmakers opened the new century by blowing a hole in the budget with major tax cuts.

The Bush tax cuts carried an initial 10-year cost estimate of $1.35 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They were reauthorized and expanded in 2003, and then again in 2006. In 2010, President Obama signed another extension.

The cost of the latest two-year extension? $544.3 billion.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has paid out more than a half-billion dollars in homebuyer tax credits to people who probably didn’t qualify, a government investigator said Friday.

Most of the money — about $326 million — went to more than 47,000 taxpayers who didn’t qualify as first-time homebuyers because there was evidence they had already owned homes, said the report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. Other credits went to prison inmates, taxpayers who bought homes before the credit was enacted and people who did not actually buy homes.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Watch out millionaires: The IRS is coming for you.

Especially if you make more than $10 million. Audits of these folks surged 73% last year, hitting more than 18% of taxpayers in the highest income bracket, according to recently released statistics from the IRS.