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.
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In recognition of the fact that there are better and worse ways to raise revenue, our Index focuses on how state tax revenue is raised, not how much. The rankings, therefore, reflect how well states structure their tax systems.
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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.
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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.
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Unless Congress acts, Americans are in for a tax hike in 2026.
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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
The federal tax code remains a major source of frustration and controversy for Americans, and a hindrance to economic growth and opportunity. Other countries, such as Estonia, have proven that sufficient tax revenue can be collected in a less frustrating and more efficient way.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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Tax reform should aim to get the tax code out of the way of entrepreneurship by making it simpler, less burdensome, and eliminating its anti-growth biases.
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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.
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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 most important thing that Congress and the administration can do to boost economic growth, lift workers’ wages, create jobs, and make the U.S. economy more competitive globally, is reform our business tax system.
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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.
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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
A well-designed territorial tax system would reduce the incentive for companies to invert, encourage businesses to invest in and expand operations throughout the world, and allow capital to flow more freely back to the U.S., but would also come with some new challenges.
28 min readEstate and inheritance taxes reduce investment, discourage business expansion, and sometimes drive wealthy taxpayers out of state. It’s little wonder that states are under pressure to reduce or eliminate them.
44 min read
While most states enact tax changes at the beginning of the calendar year, a number of them implement changes at the beginning of the fiscal year. Eight states have tax changes that will take effect on July 1, 2017, the beginning of the 2018 fiscal year.
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Real tax reform should boost incomes for all. A corporate income tax cut could be a means to do that, but not if it’s temporary. A temporary cut is less likely to promote growth and less likely to benefit American workers.
14 min read
Interest deductibility creates holes in the tax base, distorts corporate investment strategies, and contributes to a potentially dangerous macroeconomic environment of overleveraging.
20 min read
U.S. taxes on new business investment are uncompetitive globally. While corporate tax rate reductions would have a significant impact on competitiveness, expensing proposals currently being considered would add much more grease to make the wheels turn in the U.S. economy.
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