What a Democratic Congress Means for Federal Tax Policy in 2027
With Democrats retaking control of the US House of Representatives and US Senate, several new federal tax issues are on the table for 2027.
7 min readStudies show that when bonus depreciation is available, businesses respond by investing in more equipment and increasing employment, as they need more workers to operate the new equipment.
With Democrats retaking control of the US House of Representatives and US Senate, several new federal tax issues are on the table for 2027.
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Nearly half of all hospitals are exempt from paying US corporate income taxes. As healthcare spending rises, lawmakers have questioned whether hospitals are providing as much in community benefits as they derive from tax exemptions.
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As scrutiny over data center investment and AI rises, some commentators are concerned about how expensing interacts with these ongoing investments. Most of these concerns misunderstand what expensing does.
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Hall’s research helped economists understand how taxes distort investment decisions, while his work with Rabushka shows how to minimize those distortions. Although the US remains far from a pure consumption tax, Hall’s work informs efforts to reduce the tax burden on investment, improve neutrality, and promote long-run economic growth.
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While there are many factors that affect a country’s economic performance, taxes play an important role. A well-structured tax code is easy for taxpayers to comply with and can promote economic development while raising sufficient revenue for a government’s priorities.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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US policymakers have put forward two new tax proposals to address concerns about how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact land, energy, and the workforce.
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If Canada doesn’t make these provisions permanent, it will drop to 12th place in the capital cost recovery ranking once provisions expire in 2034.
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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.
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The OBBBA made substantial improvements to cost recovery, but more opportunities remain for policymakers looking to improve the investment climate in the US.
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The EU Tax Omnibus proposal would create an EU-wide minimum standard for full expensing, but it confines that standard to qualifying tangible assets used in research and development (R&D) rather than to broader asset classes.
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Rather than adopt temporary policies that phase out and expire, policymakers should focus their efforts on long-term reforms to support investment.
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The Tax Foundation uses and maintains a General Equilibrium Model, known as our Taxes and Growth (TAG) Model to simulate the effects of government tax and spending policies on the economy and on government revenues and budgets.
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The ongoing economic uncertainty from global geopolitical threats, supply chain disruptions, rising interest rates, and lagging economic growth in many developed countries have highlighted the importance of private business investment.
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Although sometimes overlooked in discussions about corporate taxation, capital allowances play an important role in a country’s corporate tax base and can impact investment decisions—with far-reaching economic consequences.
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Foreign R&D generally complements domestic innovation rather than substituting for it, so penalizing foreign R&D weakens US firms in cross-border mergers and acquisitions and in domestic production that depends on global scale.
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