Implemented in 1991, Sweden’s carbon tax was one of the first in the world. Since then, Sweden’s carbon emissions have been declining, while there has been steady economic growth. Today, Sweden levies the highest carbon tax rate in the world and its carbon tax revenues have been decreasing slightly over the last decade.
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The pandemic precipitated the steepest decline in economic output and employment in recent history, which is leading to a drop in tax revenue. At the same time, the federal response to the crisis is producing a large increase in spending. This combination will cause the federal budget deficit to spike.
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The House Republican Study Committee released a proposal, “Reclaiming the American Dream,” which includes 118 policy recommendations to address education, labor, and welfare policy with the aim of expanding opportunity, liberty, and free enterprise for all Americans.
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Joe Biden recently released a piece reviewing his tax proposals, contrasting them with President Donald Trump’s tax ideas. A major theme within this piece can be summarized in the title: “A Tale of Two Tax Policies: Trump Rewards Wealth, Biden Rewards Work.”
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State tax revenue collections were down 5.5 percent in FY 2020, driven by a dismal final quarter (April through June) as states began to feel the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. While these early losses are certainly not desirable, they are manageable and far better than many feared.
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A recent OECD report reveals a tendency towards higher property taxes, often in the form of base broadening, tax rate increases, or both.
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Just as COVID-19 is putting pressure on other sources of revenue, the loss of VAT revenues resulting from the crisis will force governments to evaluate their VAT systems.
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What does the Senate Republican coronavirus package do? Are there better ways of providing short-run relief without making the tax code more complicated?
6 min read
Over the last two decades, corporate income tax rates have declined around the world. Our new map shows the most recent changes in corporate tax rates in European OECD countries, comparing how combined statutory corporate income tax rates have changed between 2017 and 2020.
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If the goal of the Biden campaign is to bring new investment and jobs to the U.S., it is doubtful that these new tax rules will contribute to that goal.
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Tax treaties usually provide mechanisms to eliminate double taxation and can provide certainty and stability for taxpayers and encourage foreign investment and trade. A broad network of tax treaties contributes to the competitiveness of an economy.
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To discourage a certain form of international debt shifting, many countries have implemented so-called thin-capitalization rules (thin-cap rules), which limit the amount of interest a multinational business can deduct for tax purposes.
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Broad themes of the president’s agenda include providing tax relief to individuals and tax credits to businesses that engage in desired activities, while the status of expiring TCJA provisions and tariffs seems uncertain.
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Biden’s tax vision is twofold: higher taxes on high-income earners and businesses paired with more generous provisions for specific activities and households.
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One under-discussed part of the CARES Act, passed in March to provide economic relief during the COVID-19 epidemic, is a correction to a drafting error in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, often known as the “retail glitch.”
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To prevent businesses from minimizing their tax liability by taking advantage of cross-country differences in taxation, countries have implemented various anti-tax avoidance measures, one known as Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) rules.
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In recent months, several countries have introduced accelerated depreciation as a measure to incentivize private investment, including Australia, Austria, Germany, and New Zealand. There are various ways of how this policy has been implemented in the respective countries, largely depending on the existing standard depreciation schedules.
5 min read
Value-added taxes (VAT) are traditionally considered regressive, meaning they place a disproportionate burden on low-income taxpayers. However, a recent OECD study used household expenditures micro-data from 27 OECD countries to reassess this conclusion.
5 min read
Tax credits like the ones approved in the Nebraska bill may help legislators buy some time to work toward a more permanent solution, but they are not, in and of themselves, an effective means of providing lasting relief or generating long-term economic growth.
7 min read