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.

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Chips Are Down in Semiconductor Tax World

The Senate has begun debate on the so-called Chips bill, which would provide $52 billion in grants and $24 billion in tax credits to supposedly strengthen the production of semiconductors in the U.S.

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How Tariffs and the Trade War Hurt U.S. Agriculture

With inflation continuing to skyrocket, especially for food, which reached 10.4 percent in June, it is worth examining how the ongoing U.S. trade war with China and U.S. tariff policy overall has impacted U.S. agriculture and food prices.

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Three Questions on Pillar One

While the global minimum tax gets much attention in the media, there is another significant piece to the deal.

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Lithuanian Model Could Help French Workers’ Upward Mobility

Reshaping some of these policies to generate a smoother variation of marginal tax rates over different income levels would likely raise labor supply and encourage the upward mobility of workers and especially that of average-income workers.

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Biden and OECD Tax Proposals Would Hurt FDI

Academic research indicates foreign direct investment (FDI) is highly responsive to the corporate effective tax rate (ETRs); that is, the tax rate after accounting for all deduction and credits available to corporations.

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Pennsylvania Cuts Corporate Net Income Tax Rate

Policymakers from both parties in Harrisburg have proposed reducing Pennsylvania’s 9.99 percent corporate net income tax (CNIT) rate but could not agree on an approach—until now. With the enactment of HB 1342 lawmakers finally succeeded in cutting what had been the second highest state corporate tax rate in the nation.

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