Garrett Watson is Senior Policy Analyst and Modeling Manager at the Tax Foundation, where he conducts research on federal and state tax policy. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, the Associated Press and other major outlets.
Previously, Garrett was a program manager at a nearby think tank and conducted policy research on economic opportunity and labor markets, including non-compete clause reform.
Garrett earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, where he studied economics and philosophy. Garrett lives in northwest Arkansas and is an avid hockey fan and snowboarder.
Sen. Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act would replace the Child Tax Credit with a monthly child allowance administered by the Social Security Administration, making the benefit more generous and accessible to low-income households without earned income.
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The House Ways and Means Committee measures would further extend the relief measures created by the CARES Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and would go further by significantly expanding existing tax credits and making changes to the international tax system.
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House Ways and Means Democrats recently released a proposal to expand the child tax credit for one year as part of President Biden’s larger $1.9 trillion economic relief package.
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Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently proposed the Family Security Act, which features a new, more generous child allowance for families with children while reforming other sources of aid for low-income individuals.
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Some lawmakers have expressed interest in repealing the SALT cap, which was originally imposed as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in late 2017. It is important to understand who benefits from the SALT deduction as it currently exists, and who would benefit from the deduction if the cap were repealed.
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President Biden’s plan builds on previous relief packages and would include larger payments to individuals, expanded relief for households and small businesses, funding for vaccine distribution, and aid to state and local governments.
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The latest $900 billion coronavirus relief bill extends and modifies several provisions first enacted in the CARES Act, Congress’s $2.2 trillion pandemic relief law that was passed in March. With this package, lawmakers will have responded to the coronavirus and related economic hardship with a record-setting $3 trillion of fiscal support.
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The coronavirus relief package represents the second-largest recovery legislation, behind only the CARES Act, for a combined total of more than $3 trillion in support.
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As Congress works to provide another round of emergency economic relief, it is a good time to step back and consider how tax policy affects entrepreneurs and small businesses.
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers released two compromise relief bills to address the COVID-19 pandemic, totaling about $908 billion: The Emergency Coronavirus Relief Act and the Bipartisan State and Local Support and Small Business Protection Act.
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Any additional relief to address a temporary economic crisis should be temporary, targeted toward those most in need, and consistent with good long-term tax policy.
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Policymakers should consider finding ways to simplify the administration of relief during future crises. This will help ensure the relief is timely and targeted, key components of any successful relief package for this crisis or crises in the future.
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President Biden may make greater use of regulatory changes to modify how tax law is interpreted and administered. There are several areas where a Biden Treasury Department, likely led by former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, may focus.
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While there are many tax changes built into the tax code over the coming years for individuals and businesses, the recent claim that lower- and middle-income Americans may see a “stealth tax increase” in 2021 due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is untrue.
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There has been an ongoing debate about how automation and the use of robots in the workplace has impacted workers’ wages and employment. Recently, MIT and Boston University economists examined whether tax policy favors certain forms of automation that puts workers at a competitive disadvantage.
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President Biden and Congress should concentrate on areas of common ground, finding incremental places to improve the tax code. A bipartisan bill recently introduced to help retirement savings is a good model for what incremental reform may look like.
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Increasing the corporate tax rate is often offered as a solution to income inequality because higher-income individuals tend to own more corporate shares than others and may bear the burden of a tax increase on corporate income.
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If we consider Biden’s tax plan over the entire budget window (2021 to 2030) as a percentage of GDP—1.30 percent—it would rank as the 6th largest tax increase since the 1940s and and one of the largest tax increases not associated with wartime funding.
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What has President Joe Biden proposed in terms of tax policy changes? Our experts provide the details and analyze the potential economic, revenue, and distributional impacts.
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Contrary to the perceptions of some, new data indicate that (1) income earned after taxes and transfers has increased over the past several decades for all income groups; (2) the federal tax system is increasingly progressive; and (3) that system relies heavily on higher earners to raise revenue for government services and means-tested transfers.
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