Explore our research and analysis of the various tax proposals in the latest budget reconciliation bill.
The persistently high inflation in recent months has made some lawmakers question the need for additional deficit spending, In the short term, the Build Back Better Act would likely contribute to inflation, but the magnitude of that contribution is unclear.
3 min read
The Build Back Better Act would raise taxes to pay for social spending programs. But the design of some of the tax increases may end up hurting private pensions, among other problems.
6 min read
One unintended consequence of the tax proposals in the Build Back Better Act is a higher potential burden on wireless spectrum investments, which could slow the build out of 5G technology as the U.S. races to compete with other countries—moving in the opposite direction of countries like China that are actively subsidizing 5G expansion.
5 min read
Due to the House Build Back Better tax plan’s economically costly and inefficient tax increases, our analysis finds that long-run GDP would drop by a little over $1 for every $1 in new tax revenue.
6 min read
Infrastructure has made its way across the finish line, but the tax debate is far from over on Capitol Hill. Senior policy analyst Garrett Watson joins host Jesse Solis to walk us through the latest iteration of Democrats’ trillion-dollar reconciliation package and the myriad tax changes that are being proposed to finance this deal.
The most recent versions of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan are improvements on the original proposal, but would still reduce economic growth and average after-tax incomes for the top 80 percent of earners in the long run.
7 min read
The nicotine tax proposal in the Build Back Better Act neglects sound excise tax policy design and by doing so risks harming public health. Lawmakers should reconsider this approach to nicotine taxation.
8 min read
Under the latest iteration of the House Build Back Better Act (BBBA), the average top tax rate on personal income would reach 57.4 percent, giving the U.S. the highest rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
2 min read
Under the Build Back Better framework, six states and D.C. would face combined top marginal capital gains tax rates of more than 40 percent, nearing the top rate among OECD countries.
3 min read
Under the new Build Back Better framework, the United States would tax capital gains at the third-highest top marginal rate among rich nations, averaging nearly 37 percent.
1 min read
Congress is debating new ways to raise revenue that would make the tax code more complex and more difficult to administer. The new proposals—imposing an alternative minimum tax on corporate book income, applying an excise tax on stock buybacks, and, at one point this week, a tax on unrealized capital gains for billionaires—are unreliable and highly complex ways to raise revenue.
10 min read
President Biden and Congressional Democrats introduced a scaled-back proposal of their reconciliation package, with House leadership saying they hope to vote on this new trillion-dollar package ASAP. We talk through what made it into the deal, what was cut, and what the impact of these tax changes would be.
When examining how tax policy impacts the economy, researchers typically look at labor supply and investment responses. One other channel through which taxes impact the economy has been less studied: innovation.
3 min read
Congressional Democrats are reported to be weighing a special tax on the assets of billionaires to raise revenues to pay for their Build Back Better spending plan. There are two fundamental challenges to such a plan.
8 min read
The legislation put forward by Democratic members of the House of Representatives would reverse many of the 2017 reforms while increasing burdens on businesses and workers.
2 min read
With corporate and individual rate hikes potentially out of the Build Back Better (BBB) reconciliation package, lawmakers are weighing alternative options to raise revenue. Rather than come up with untested proposals and complicated changes to the tax base, they should prioritize options that raise revenue while improving the structure of the tax code.
4 min read
Raising taxes on stock-based compensation through a book income tax will disadvantage this form of compensation and produce more complexity in the tax system without providing benefits to workers.
5 min read
One has to wonder how stable or sustainable the Democrats’ spending program can be if it must rely so heavily on the taxes paid by such a small number of taxpayers as in the top 1 percent.
5 min read
Reducing the tax gap is a good idea, but the reporting requirements for financial institutions could be better-targeted at the problem at hand.
4 min read
President Biden expanded and fundamentally changed the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for one year in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) passed in March 2021. Policymakers are now deciding the future of the expansion as part of the proposed reconciliation package, but a wide range of estimates for the effects of a permanent expansion is confusing the debate.
7 min read