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Evaluating U.S. Tax Reform Options & Trade-Offs

The economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic poses a triple challenge for tax policy in the United States. Lawmakers are tasked with crafting a policy response that will accelerate the economic recovery, reduce the mounting deficit, and protect the most vulnerable.

To assist lawmakers in navigating the challenge, and to help the American public understand the tax changes being proposed, the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy modeled how 70 potential changes to the tax code would affect the U.S. economy, distribution of the tax burden, and federal revenue.

In tax policy there is an ever-present trade-off among how much revenue a tax will raise, who bears the burden of a tax, and what impact a tax will have on economic growth. Armed with the information in our new book, Options for Reforming America’s Tax Code 2.0, policymakers can debate the relative merits and trade-offs of each option to improve the tax code in a post-pandemic world.

georgia amendment 1

Georgia Amendment 1 Threatens the State’s Housing Market

Georgia should focus on policies that restrict the overall growth of property taxes, not policies that functionally freeze property taxes for current owners by shifting costs onto new owners and into the sales tax.  

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Taxpayers Shoulder a Heavy Burden for Sports Stadium Subsidies

Taxpayers Shoulder a Heavy Burden for Sports Stadium Subsidies

Sports stadium subsidies are salient political gimmicks designed to appear as if politicians are providing tangible benefits to taxpayers. The empirical evidence shows repeatedly that stadium subsidies fail to generate new tax revenue and new jobs or attract new businesses.

6 min read
Rescheduling marijuana and rescheduling cannabis Department of Justice DOJ tax and legalization of cannabis and marijuana Section 280E

What Are the Tax Consequences of Rescheduling Marijuana?

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it would move to reschedule marijuana. This move doesn’t do as much for legal cannabis sales as proposed federal legislation like the States 2.0 Act, but rescheduling cannabis has major ramifications for cannabis businesses.

4 min read