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Stephen J. Entin Tax Foundation Steve Entin
Expert

Stephen J. Entin

Senior Fellow Emeritus

Stephen J. Entin is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Tax Foundation.

Previously, he was President and Executive Director at the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation (IRET), a pro-free market economic public policy research organization based in Washington DC. He advised the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (the Kemp Commission), assisted in the drafting of the Commission’s report, and was the author of several of its support documents.

Mr. Entin is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Department of the Treasury. He joined the Treasury Department in 1981 with the incoming Reagan Administration. He participated in the preparation of economic forecasts for the President’s budgets, and the development of the 1981 tax cuts, including the “tax indexing” provision that keeps tax rates from rising due to inflation.

Mr. Entin represented the Treasury Department in the preparation of the Annual Reports of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security System, and conducted research into the long run outlook for the system. In his work in eight annual reports of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds, Mr. Entin was instrumental in revamping the reports to make their economic and demographic assumptions more realistic and to present their information in a more informative and understandable format. This information triggered several proposals in the Congress to adjust the formulas determining social security benefits in order to avoid future payroll tax increases.

Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Entin was a staff economist with the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress, where he developed legislation for tax rate reduction and incentives to encourage saving.

Mr. Entin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received his graduate training in economics at the University of Chicago, majoring in macroeconomics, monetary policy, and international economics.

Written Works

UK tax plan Rishi Sunak tax plan

A Tale of Two Tax Plans in the United Kingdom

History is clear. Lowering budget deficits via spending restraint frees resources for additional private output and jobs. Lowering them by raising taxes on business investment and labor services makes it harder to dis-inflate without a recession.

7 min read

The Legacy of Harvard Economist Dale Jorgenson

Dr. Jorgenson’s work has been instrumental in convincing many in the tax policy community to take seriously the need to factor in the economic effects of taxation on capital formation, productivity, wages, and employment in forecasting the welfare and federal budget consequences of changes in tax policy.

3 min read

Tax Policy to Bridge the Coronavirus-Induced Economic Slowdown

Tax policy can help by giving businesses current access to future tax “assets”—deductions and credits the businesses will be allowed or owed over time any way under current law—instead of making them wait.

5 min read
state tax revenue decline, state tax collections, local tax collections. Sources of Government Revenue

Conference Report Limits on Interest Deductions

There is no good reason to eliminate interest deductions to permit expensing. Expensing is a key element of any tax system which seeks to put all economic activity on a level playing field.

9 min read
corporate income tax

Labor Bears Much of the Cost of the Corporate Tax

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 read