The Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy takes a quantitative approach to analyzing the economic, budgetary, and distributional impact of important campaign, legislative, and other popular tax proposals using our dynamic Taxes and Growth (TAG) macroeconomic model.
The mission of our economic and tax modeling program is to educate lawmakers and the public about the key trade-offs in tax policy, the real-world impact of those trade-offs on taxpayers and our economy, and the best options for achieving principled and pro-growth tax reform.
In an attempt to provide a realistic, data-driven analysis of federal tax policy, the Tax Foundation has developed a General Equilibrium Model to simulate the effects of tax policies on the economy and on government revenues and budgets.
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Lawmakers should use the most comprehensive analytical tools available to them—like dynamic scoring—to make informed decisions about policy changes.
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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.
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The business tax changes originally introduced in the TCJA are scheduled to increase tax burdens on businesses at a time when economic headwinds and broader uncertainty are higher than they have been in decades.
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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.
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A robust collection of 70 potential US tax reform changes and US tax reform options for reforming the tax code. See the comprehensive tax reform guide.
There’s a useful contrast between two revenue options related to President Biden’s infrastructure push. The president’s American Jobs Plan includes a proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. Meanwhile, historically, the gas tax is the main revenue source for transportation funding.
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The international corporate tax changes in President Biden’s tax plan would increase tax rates on domestic income more than on foreign income, resulting in a net increase in profit shifting out of the US, according to our Multinational Tax Model.
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As policymakers consider tax options to boost the U.S. economy’s long-run economic growth, they should consider reforms that would increase growth the most while minimizing forgone tax revenue.
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The Options guide presents the economic effects we estimate would occur in the long term, or 20 to 30 years from now, but we can also use our model to show the cumulative effects of the policy change—providing more context, for instance, about how the effects of a higher corporate income tax rate compound over time, which we estimate would reduce GDP by a cumulative $720 billion over the next 10 years.
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Simplifying the R&D credit, making it more accessible for smaller firms, and ensuring full cost recovery for R&D expenses by canceling the upcoming R&D amortization are three things policymakers should consider when trying to improve the tax code for R&D.
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Some tax hikes are more damaging than others, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and new Tax Foundation economic modeling.
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As the Biden administration and Congress consider making the expanded child tax credit permanent, a nearly $1.6 trillion expansion of tax code-administered benefits, they should consider financing it in a way that doesn’t create significant headwinds to economic recovery.
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President Biden and congressional policymakers have proposed several changes to the corporate income tax, including raising the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and imposing a 15 percent minimum tax on the book income of large corporations, to raise revenue for new spending programs. Our new modeling analyzes the economic, revenue, and distributional impact of these proposals.
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A new study illustrates how overlooking an important element of the tax system—the structure of the tax base—can lead to an incomplete understanding of how tax reform impacts the economy.
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President Biden is calling for a third round of economic impact payments to households as part of his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Under the plan, the payments would be $1,400 per person, topping off the recent round of $600 payments for a combined $2,000 per person. Senate Republicans have proposed payment amounts of $1,000 per individual and $500 per dependent, lower income thresholds, and faster phaseout rates.
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If we consider Biden’s tax plan over the entire budget window (2021 to 2030) as a percentage of GDP—1.30 percent—it would rank as the 6th largest tax increase since the 1940s and and one of the largest tax increases not associated with wartime funding.
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What has President Joe Biden proposed in terms of tax policy changes? Our experts provide the details and analyze the potential economic, revenue, and distributional impacts.
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Senators Ted Cruz and Martha McSally introduced the CREATE JOBS Act that would make two significant changes to incentivize investment in the United States.
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We estimate that moving to permanent full expensing and neutral cost recovery for structures would add more than 1 million full-time equivalent jobs to the long-run economy and boost the long-run capital stock by $4.8 trillion.
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By updating the tax code to allow developers to more fully cover their investments, construction costs will fall, which, in turn, means that federal affordable housing assistance dollars will go that much further in helping low-income tenants.
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Our analysis shows that the economic benefits of federal investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure may be undercut by the negative effects of the financing of those investments, such as when the corporate income tax is increased.
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Based on the CBO’s assessment of the economic and budgetary effects of federal investment, lawmakers should look to spur private sector investment rather than try to enact a massive federal infrastructure bill.
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Discover why there are better and worse ways for governments to raise a dollar of revenue. Compare the economic impact of the three basic tax types—taxes on what you earn, buy, and own—including three specific taxes within each category. Learn about the basics of “dynamic scoring,” one tool economists can use to compare the economic and revenue impact of different tax policies.