Stay informed with quick and accessible analysis of today's top tax policy topics. Read Tax Foundation's Tax Policy Blog for insight from our experts on tax policies across the US and abroad.
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The proposed GROWTH Act would make the tax treatment of investment funds more consistent and improve the tax treatment of saving in the US by allowing investors to defer tax on qualifying reinvested capital gains distributions until they sell their fund shares.
6 min read
Studies have repeatedly shown that US businesses and consumers are bearing a disproportionate share of the tariff burden.
7 min read
Many states levy taxes on liquids on a per-barrel basis. However, some states define a “barrel” differently than the standard measurement. The landscape of unharmonious units creates complexity and compliance costs for businesses that must pay these taxes in multiple states.
5 min read
The European Union’s revised Tobacco Excise Directive (TED) is the latest proposal from Brussels that raises questions about the role that the EU plays in relation to the Member States.
7 min read
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 “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
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
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
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
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
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
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
In 2025, the CTP reduced the backlog of premarket tobacco product applications (PMTAs) by about 70 percent. This year, the CTP is already accelerating PMTA reviews further and allowing some leeway for products under review but not yet officially authorized. This is great progress, but much more can be made.
7 min read