Expensing for capital investment is not a special tax break. Expensing aligns the timing of tax deductions with the timing of actual capital expenditures so that the tax code does not discourage marginal investment projects.
7 min read
The US federal government faces several fiscal challenges in the coming decades, including the growing burden of federal healthcare programs and tax preferences.
14 min read
The “no tax on” deductions show the drawbacks of using narrowly tailored provisions to provide tax relief.
6 min read
On September 15th, Canada announced that full expensing for machinery, equipment, and patent rights will be made permanent and broadened from around 15 percent to two thirds of business capital investment.
6 min read
Oral nicotine pouches have rapidly become a popular option for consumers who want nicotine without the harmful combustion and chemicals of traditional cigarettes. As these alternative nicotine products (ANPs) successfully draw smokers to non-combustible nicotine consumption, many states have scrambled to incorporate these new products into their tax regimes.
6 min read
While economic levers like sanctions and tariffs have long been recognized as geoeconomic tools, tax policies have rarely been considered a part of this toolkit.
36 min read
Policymakers considering AI-specific token or compute taxes can learn from the “bit tax” proposals of the 1990s during the rise of the internet.
6 min read
At the Republican National Convention in Dallas, President Trump promised payments of $5,000 to every adult citizen in the US if the Republicans maintain control of the House and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections. Vice President JD Vance later supported the idea, saying that the president’s new tariffs are generating a lot of revenue that can be shared with Americans.
3 min read
Most Americans don’t understand how the tax code works. According to a poll conducted by TaxEDU, a majority of respondents do not have a basic understanding of common tax concepts.
Jock taxes on highly paid athletes and entertainers are here to stay, but states could make life easier for the rest of us, at very little cost, by adopting reasonable nonresident filing and withholding thresholds for ordinary taxpayers.
5 min read
There is a real danger that the well-founded admiration of expensing can slip into the belief that rates will not matter if the business tax base is correctly designed. Avi-Yonah’s article is a recent and well-articulated version of this intellectual undercurrent.
7 min read
A Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT) reduces the tax code’s penalty on investment, narrows its bias toward debt over equity, and removes much of the incentive to shift profits abroad.
7 min read
As energy prices have declined, European countries have switched the focus of their windfall profits taxes—a one-time tax levied on a company or industry when economic conditions result in large, unexpected profits—from energy providers to the banking and financial sector.
7 min read
Investment in digital assets, long thought of as a niche interest reserved for enthusiasts, has broken into the mainstream. In 2026, about one in five US adults report being invested in or using cryptocurrency.
5 min read
Economists and journalists have been pointing to a labor share of income series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as evidence that capital is taking an ever-increasing slice of the economic pie. But a closer look at the national income accounts shows a different story.
7 min read
Utah’s targeted advertising tax is not identical to Maryland’s, but it shares key characteristics that make it vulnerable to the same challenges that sank Maryland’s tax, starting with a clash with the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA).
Ten years ago, then-Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady released the “Better Way” Tax Plan, the blueprint that would eventually become the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017—the largest overhaul of the US tax code in over 30 years.
Tax Foundation’s new resource, Options for Reforming America’s Tax Code 3.0, demonstrates that not all revenue-raising options are created equal—some do more harm to the economy than others for the same amount of revenue.
7 min read
A new paper finds that foreign exporters absorbed 47 percent of the tariff burden, passing on a smaller share to US importers than estimated by other studies.
6 min read
When properly measured, consistent with how we assess progressivity in tax policy, Social Security benefits are progressive.
5 min read