Academic studies show that higher corporate tax rates depress worker wages and lead to fewer jobs. An Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD) study has found that the corporate tax is the least efficient and most harmful way for governments to raise revenue.
The federal government’s debt burden and interest on the debt are near record levels and headed higher, raising legitimate concerns about an eventual debt crisis. Given the increasingly dysfunctional budget process, the most viable option on the table to stave off such a crisis is a statutory bipartisan fiscal commission with buy-in from leaders of both parties.
6 min read
Corporations in the United States pay federal corporate income taxes levied at a 21 percent rate. Forty-four states and DC also levy taxes on corporate income, with top marginal rates ranging from 2.5 percent in North Carolina to 11.5 percent in New Jersey.
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On Election Day, Coloradans will get to decide on two competing measures on income taxes: an initiated statute that would cap income taxes at the current 4.4 percent rate; and a constitutional amendment that would authorize a graduated-rate individual and corporate income tax, paired with an initiated statute setting new rates, with a top rate of 8.4 percent.
6 min read
The Rental Housing Investment Act (RHIA) would remove much of that tax penalty by allowing developers of new rental housing to immediately deduct up to $150,000 of cost per unit.
7 min read
Congress has passed some major simplifying reforms in recent years, but the tax code has still grown more complex over the past few decades. New carveouts, savings vehicles, and targeted tax increases would complicate it further.
8 min read
Americans will spend 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026, costing about $387 billion in lost productivity. Including an additional $157 billion in out-of-pocket costs, complying with the federal tax code will cost Americans more than $544 billion this year, over 1.7 percent of GDP.
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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
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.
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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
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
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.
If America’s leaders today want to learn how to build a lasting system on the foundation of simplicity and neutrality, they should follow the Siim Kallas blueprint.
4 min read
The Belgian proposal departs significantly from sound tax policy principles and risks generating substantial economic distortions, legal uncertainty, and trade frictions while raising relatively little revenue.
Federal government debt is over $32 trillion, around the size of the nation’s annual economic output (its gross domestic product, or GDP). Debt levels this high mean US borrowing costs are sensitive to interest rate changes that may otherwise seem small.
5 min read
Poland has one of the most restrictive approaches to the tax treatment of losses in the OECD. Loss carryover provisions allow businesses to deduct their losses in one year against taxable income in another, smoothing their taxable income over time. Their absence or restriction leads to firms with more variable profits and losses over time being taxed at higher rates, penalizing risky investment, such as research and development (R&D), and business expansion.
16 min read
The Maryland Tax Court has struck down the state’s digital advertising tax and ordered that refunds be paid to taxpayers for five and a half years’ worth of collections under the unconstitutional tax.
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In June, the Dominican Republic rushed through a package of tax legislation in seven days. International examples demonstrate that consultation, transparency, and clarity are key factors for successful tax reform.
5 min read
US policymakers have put forward two new tax proposals to address concerns about how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact land, energy, and the workforce.
7 min read
Some taxes have more powerful economic effects than others, and that’s a lesson policymakers should absorb as they work to craft a tax code that encourages growth and raises sustainable revenue.
8 min read