The Tax Foundation is the world’s leading independent tax policy 501(c)(3) nonprofit. For over 80 years, our mission has remained the same: to improve lives through tax policies that lead to greater economic growth and opportunity.
Our Center for Federal Tax Policy, Center for State Tax Policy, and Center for Global Tax Policy each produce timely and high-quality research and analysis that influences the debate toward economically principled tax policies. Our experts are continuously analyzing the day’s most relevant tax policy topics and are relied upon routinely for presentations, testimony, and media appearances on tax issues spanning every level of government.
Likewise, providing journalists, taxpayers, and policymakers with basic data on taxes and spending has been a cornerstone of the Tax Foundation’s educational mission since its founding. As we wrote in our first edition of Facts & Figures in 1941, “Facts give a broader perspective; facts dissipate predilections and prejudices…[and are] an important step to meet the challenge presented by the broad problems of public finance.”
Policymakers should have two priorities in the upcoming economic policy debates: a larger economy and fiscal responsibility. Principled, pro-growth tax policy can help accomplish both.
21 min read
The State Tax Competitiveness Index enables policymakers, taxpayers, and business leaders to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare. While there are many ways to show how much state governments collect in taxes, the Index evaluates how well states structure their tax systems and provides a road map for improvement.
115 min read
While there are many factors that affect a country’s economic performance, taxes play an important role. A well-structured tax code is easy for taxpayers to comply with and can promote economic development while raising sufficient revenue for a government’s priorities.
92 min read
Facts & Figures serves as a one-stop state tax data resource that compares all 50 states on over 40 measures of tax rates, collections, burdens, and more.
2 min read
Unless Congress acts, Americans are in for a tax hike in 2026.
3 min read
Tax policy has become a significant focus of the U.S. 2024 presidential election. Our new interactive tool helps keep track of the tax policies proposed by presidential candidates during their campaigns.
The variety of approaches to taxation among European countries creates a need to evaluate these systems relative to each other. For that purpose, we have developed the European Tax Policy Scorecard—a relative comparison of European countries’ tax systems.
52 min read
This tax reform plan would boost long-run GDP by 2.5%, grow wages by 1.4%, and add 1.3M jobs, all while collecting a similar amount of tax revenue as the current code and reducing the long-run debt burden.
39 min read
States are unprepared for the ongoing shift to remote and flexible work arrangements, or for the industries and activities of today, to say nothing of tomorrow. In some states, moreover, existing tax provisions exacerbate the impact of high inflation and contribute to the supply chain crisis.
40 min read
Tax burdens rose across the country as pandemic-era economic changes caused taxable income, activities, and property values to rise faster than net national product. Tax burdens in 2020, 2021, and 2022 are all higher than in any other year since 1978.
24 min read
Of the 225 jurisdictions around the world, only six have increased their top corporate income tax rate in 2023, a trend that might be reversed in the coming years as more countries agree to implement the global minimum tax.
16 min read
A landmark comparison of corporate tax costs in all 50 states, Location Matters provides a comprehensive calculation of real-world tax burdens, going beyond headline rates to demonstrate how tax codes impact businesses and offering policymakers a road map to improvement.
8 min read
The 2021 tax year was the fourth since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made many significant, but temporary, changes to the individual income tax code to lower tax rates, widen brackets, increase the standard deduction and child tax credit, and more.
9 min read
At the end of 2025, the individual tax provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expire all at once. Without congressional action, most taxpayers will see a notable tax increase relative to current policy in 2026.
4 min read
If reelected, President Trump would drastically escalate the trade war he started during his first term. But what often goes unnoticed is President Biden’s role in continuing Trump’s first trade war. In fact, more tax revenue from the trade war tariffs has been collected under Biden than under Trump.
5 min read
The marriage penalty and the marriage bonus are each ways that the income tax code violates the principle of neutrality and affects taxpayer behavior. Here’s how each works and why they deserve attention.
13 min read
Federal tax reform gives states an opportunity to improve their own tax codes. This study surveys the federal provisions to which states conform, what each state can expect from federal tax changes, and what options are available to them.
58 min read
The scramble to restore the full state and local tax deduction for high-income taxpayers has resulted in inventive proposals that, for both legal and practical reasons, are unlikely to succeed.
22 min read
According to the Tax Foundation’s Taxes and Growth Model, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would lead to a 1.7 percent increase in GDP over the long term, 1.5 percent higher wages, an additional 339,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and cost $1.47 trillion on a static basis and by $448 billion on a dynamic basis.
22 min read
In 2018, trends to watch in state tax policy will include reductions in corporate tax rates, the spread of gross receipts taxes, new and lower taxes on marijuana, estate tax repeal, a wait-and-see approach on federal tax reform, and more.
16 min read
This study demonstrates how Tax Foundation’s TAG model calculates the weighted average METRs for different capital assets in the corporate and noncorporate sectors. The high marginal rates of up to 53 percent in the corporate sector illustrate why there is an urgent need for business tax reform.
12 min read
This comprehensive overview of the of the Senate Tax Cuts and Jobs Act includes a summary of its details and macroeconomic analysis of how it would impact federal revenue, wages, GDP, and after-tax incomes.
23 min read
This paper evaluates the arguments for and against “crowding out” and compares these arguments to empirical studies. It discusses the impact of tax changes on the allocation of national income between consumption and saving, and the allocation of saving between private investment and government deficits. It finds that the crowding out argument is largely based on a mistaken assumption about the flexibility and availability of saving and credit for the financing of government deficits and private investment.
31 min read
This comprehensive overview of the of the House Tax Cuts and Jobs Act includes a summary of its details and macroeconomic analysis of how it would impact federal revenue, wages, GDP, and after-tax incomes.
20 min read
Hampered by high marginal tax rates and complex business tax rules, the United States again ranks towards the bottom of the pack on our 2017 International Tax Competitiveness Index, placing 30 out of 35 OECD countries.
11 min read
When taking a closer look at the UK’s recent corporate tax reform experiment, it becomes clear that there was significantly more at work than just a simple rate cut. Increasing the effective marginal tax rate on new investments could have had a negative effect on wages, potentially offsetting the positive effects from the corporate rate cut.
4 min read
Recent empirical evidence shows that workers bear upwards of 70 percent of the corporate income tax burden, much more than popular tax models claim, which make errors in how they account for super-normal returns and the openness of our economy.
50 min readDue in part to historical accident and also to the proliferation of exemptions, the effectiveness of the state sales tax continues to erode. The median state sales tax, which should apply to all personal consumption, is nonly applied to 23 percent of personal consumption.
25 min read
For 15 years, our State Business Tax Climate Index has been the standard for legislators and taxpayers to understand how their state’s tax code compares and how it can be improved. Now, for the first time ever, you can explore our Index’s 100+ variables in an easy to use, interactive format.
16 min read
Instead of making expensing temporary, lawmakers could pursue other ways to speed up cost recovery with permanent economic gains and without drastically reducing revenue. One way to do that is by enacting “depreciation indexing.”
12 min read
The Ohio Commercial Activity Tax, a 0.26 percent tax on business gross receipts above $1 million, is a throwback to an earlier era of taxation, bringing back a tax type that had been in steady retreat for nearly a century.
34 min read
These four Tax Foundation tax plans demonstrate ways in which lawmakers could achieve permanent, pro-growth tax reform while keeping the level of federal revenue and the distribution of the tax burden roughly the same as current law.
25 min read
The elimination of tax expenditures is a popular way to pay for tax reform, but not all tax expenditures are equally worthy of elimination. It is important to ask, for each expenditure, whether it serves a reasonable purpose and whether it accomplishes that purpose in a reasonable way.
23 min read
Aside from hurting low-income earners, the poor revenue performance of Philadelphia’s soda tax, 24 times higher than the excise rate on beer, threatens the sustainability of the education programs it is intended to fund.
12 min read