How to Refuel the Highway Trust Fund
Examples from other countries and US states show that well-designed user fees can fund transportation infrastructure effectively.
19 min read
Expert
Alex Muresianu
Senior Policy Analyst
Alex Muresianu is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Tax Foundation, focused on federal tax policy. Previously, Alex worked on the federal team as an intern in the summer of 2018 and as a research assistant in summer 2020.
He attended Tufts University, graduating with a degree in economics and minors in finance and political science in February 2021. He also worked for the Pioneer Institute in 2019, spent a summer as a journalism intern at Reason magazine, and written op-eds for various print and online publications.
Alex originally hails from outside Boston, and enjoys Dungeons and Dragons, ’80s movies (Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, the Schwarzenegger filmography, Die Hard, etc.), and classic rock.
Latest Work
What to Expect from the New OBBBA Expensing for Manufacturing Structures
Expensing for manufacturing structures is a significant step forward for the tax treatment of structures, but it could be improved in several ways.
7 min read
Is the One Big Beautiful Bill a Step Back for Tax Simplicity?
In this episode of The Deduction podcast, host Kyle Hulehan discusses the complexities of the US tax system with Alex Muresianu, Senior Policy Analyst at the Tax Foundation.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act Makes the Individual Income Tax More Complex
While the OBBBA brings some stability by making many of the TCJA’s reforms permanent, it generally fails to reform the tax code’s accumulating complexity.
31 min read
Tax Complexity Now Costs the US Economy over $536 Billion Annually
Americans will spend almost 7.1 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2025. This is equal to 3.4 million full-time workers—almost the population of Los Angeles and nearly 38 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2024—doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year.
9 min read
How the One Big Beautiful Bill Changes Green Energy Tax Credits
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) significantly alters the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) green energy subsidies.
6 min read
Will Trump Accounts Actually Help Families Save?
Who are Trump Accounts really for, and will they actually help families save? With yet another savings vehicle added to an already confusing system, do these accounts solve a real problem—or just add more complexity?
One Big Beautiful Bill Does Better with Permanence, but Is Still Full of Temporary Provisions
Several major new tax breaks are scheduled to expire at the end of 2028, setting the stage for another tax fight to either extend them or allow them to expire.
5 min read
‘Trump Accounts’ Could Be Better. Here’s How.
If the federal government really wanted to make saving more accessible for taxpayers, it would swap the proposal for Trump Accounts to replace the complicated mess of savings accounts currently available with universal savings accounts.
5 min read
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes many of the individual tax cuts and reforms of the TCJA permanent. It improves upon the TCJA by making expensing for R&D and equipment permanent. However, for the most part, it does not include further structural reforms, and instead introduces many new, narrow tax breaks to the code, adding complexity and raising revenue costs.
7 min read
One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tax Policies: Details and Analysis
We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would increase long-run GDP by 1.2 percent and reduce federal tax revenue by $5 trillion over the next decade on a conventional basis.
11 min read
Budget Reconciliation: Tracking the 2025 Trump Tax Cuts
President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4, 2025.
18 min read
How the IRA Provisions (and Scores) Have Changed
The final House bill makes impressive cuts to the IRA green energy tax credits, but it does so in part by introducing more complexity.
5 min read
“One Big Beautiful Bill Act” House GOP Tax Plan: Details and Analysis
Our preliminary analysis finds the tax provisions increase long-run GDP by 0.8 percent and reduce federal tax revenue by $4.0 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis before added interest costs.
9 min read
Making the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax Less Silly
The House reconciliation bill includes numerous changes to the tax code: good, bad, and ugly. However, the new corporate alternative minimum tax, or CAMT, goes largely untouched.
4 min read
Fixing Highway Funding in the Reconciliation Package
The EV fee in the reconciliation package would help the fiscal situation but would overcorrect the hole in the gas tax base EVs create. There are intermediate options, such as VMT taxes for EVs and commercial traffic or pairing flat EV fees with gas and diesel tax increases, that would be incrementally better than the reconciliation package’s approach.
7 min read
House GOP’s Approach to the IRA Clean Energy Tax Credits: Five Things to Know
Tax simplification has two aspects. The first is a code without a mess of targeted provisions for various social policy goals. The second is a code with provisions that are simple and easy to comply with. The bill succeeds at the first, but fails at the second.
7 min read
Even with Exemptions, Tariffs Will Hurt American Energy Production
The Trump administration advocates an “energy dominance” agenda to boost US energy production and lower costs. Its tariff agenda runs directly counter to it.
5 min read
Balls and Strikes on American Manufacturing: What Are the Facts?
Catastrophic rhetoric about US manufacturing is not justified. The tariffs are extremely counterproductive. Still, all is not well in the US manufacturing sector. What should we do?
7 min read
Taxing Life Insurance
As Congress attempts to prevent the expiration of major Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, it needs to find ways to pay for them. Ideally, it should use the least economically harmful means possible.
3 min read