TCJA Family Provisions Offer Template for Tax Reform in 2025
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s changes to family tax policy serve as a reminder to avoid looking at tax reform provisions in a vacuum.
5 min read
Featured Articles
The Child Tax Credit: Primer
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is a partially-refundable tax credit available to parents with qualifying dependents under the age of 17. Like other tax credits, the CTC reduces tax liability dollar-for-dollar of the value of the credit.
25 min readAll Related Articles
Tax Extenders in 2023: Three Major Business Provisions and an Expanded Child Credit?
In Congress, both parties have expressed widespread support for improving the treatment of R&D and potentially extending some or all of the major business provisions, while the White House and congressional Democrats have indicated interest in an expanded child tax credit, suggesting potential for a deal.
6 min read
2024 Tax Brackets
Explore the IRS inflation-adjusted 2024 tax brackets, for which taxpayers will file tax returns in early 2025.
4 min read
Testimony: The Costs and Complexity of the Federal Tax Code Demand Reform
Lawmakers should simplify the tax code so that taxpayers can understand the laws and the IRS can administer them with minimum cost and frustration.
Details and Analysis of Making the 2017 Tax Reforms Permanent
Lawmakers will have to weigh the economic, revenue, and distributional trade-offs of extending or making permanent the various provisions of the TCJA as they decide how to approach the upcoming expirations. A commitment to growth, opportunity, and fiscal responsibility should guide the approach.
18 min read
Changing Tax Policy Landscape Will Worsen U.S. Competitiveness
Policymakers on Capitol Hill should prioritize permanent pro-growth policy in the coming years as the economy struggles with inflation and the recovery from the pandemic.
4 min read
IRS Report Shows Closing the Tax Gap Would Not Close the Deficit
The latest tax gap report from the IRS has generated much media attention—and much misunderstanding.
6 min read
How Taxing Consumption Would Improve Long-Term Opportunity and Well-Being for Families and Children
Income taxes impose steeper economic costs, and often steeper administrative and compliance costs, than consumption taxes. Moving to a consumption tax would end the tax bias against saving and investment and provide an opportunity to greatly simplify anti-poverty programs embedded in the tax code.
45 min read
Summary of the Tax Credits Claimed on the Form 1040, Tax Year 2020
In tax year 2020, taxpayers claimed more than 159 million tax credits on their individual income tax returns worth a total of more than $277 billion. That was an increase of $35.3 billion from tax year 2019, largely due to an influx of pandemic relief administered through the tax code in 2020.
6 min read
Lawmakers Envision Different Paths for the Child Tax Credit
As the TCJA expiration nears, lawmakers face difficult choices in reforming the CTC. While revenue, distributional and economic effects are important, lawmakers should also focus on simplifying the rules and reducing the administrative challenges.
9 min read
A Tax Reform Plan for Growth and Opportunity: Details & Analysis
This tax reform plan would boost long-run GDP by 2.5%, grow wages by 1.4%, and add 1.3M jobs, all while collecting a similar amount of tax revenue as the current code and reducing the long-run debt burden.
38 min read
Testimony: Reviewing Recent Federal Tax Policies and Considering Pro-Growth Reforms
Lawmakers should focus on simplifying the federal tax code, creating stability, and broadly improving economic incentives. There are incremental steps that can be made on the path to fundamental tax reform.
Why Congress Is More to Blame than IRS for $26 Billion in Refundable Tax Credit Overpayments
Lawmakers should avoid delivering social and economic benefits through the tax code whenever possible and work to simplify or repeal the tax expenditures already in the tax code.
7 min read
Testimony: Taxes, Spending, and Addressing the U.S. Debt Crisis
A better-designed tax system should be a goal of any fiscal consolidation package. That said, our simulations suggest that even substantially higher tax increases are insufficient to curtail long-run debt-to-GDP growth.
Testimony: The Fiscal State of the Union
Federal spending, deficits, and debt are at unsustainable levels. The proposed federal budget is laden with redundant programs, obsolete programs, corporate welfare, and nationalized industries. As Congress begins to craft the FY 2024 federal budget, it needs to establish a process of systematically reviewing programs and priorities.
Details and Analysis of President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Proposal
According to our analysis, President Biden’s budget would reduce long-run economic output by about 1.3 percent and eliminate 335,000 FTE jobs. See what tax policies the president is proposing.
17 min read
Biden’s FY 2024 Budget Would Result in More Than $4.5 Trillion in Gross Tax Increases
President Biden’s new budget proposal outlines several major tax increases targeted at businesses and high-income individuals that would bring U.S. income tax rates far out of step with international norms.
7 min read
Efforts to Combat Inflation’s Impact on the Tax Code Should Remain a Priority in 2023
While hoping for inflation’s continued decline, policymakers should finish the job and index the tax code to prepare for future bouts of high inflation and as a contingency in case it takes longer to defeat elevated inflation than expected.
4 min read
Tax Policy in Biden’s 2023 State of the Union Address
President Biden’s State of the Union Address outlined three tax proposals, including raising the tax on stock buybacks, imposing a billionaire minimum tax, and expanding the child tax credit.
6 min read
Frustration and Delays as the 2023 Tax Filing Season Begins
A combination of long-standing IRS operational deficiencies, the agency’s temporary closure due to the pandemic, and the now-expired pandemic relief produced a perfect recipe for a paper backlog.
4 min read
CBO Analysis Finds Income Growth and Progressive Tax Code in 2019
Newly published data from the CBO indicates in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic, American incomes continued to rise as part of a broad economic expansion. It also shows that, contrary to common perceptions, the federal tax system is progressive.
4 min read