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 General Equilibrium Model, known as our Taxes and Growth (TAG) 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.
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 Tax Foundation models tax policy using our proprietary Taxes and Growth model, illustrating the economic, revenue, and distributional impacts of different changes to the federal tax code. We’ve recently implemented improvements to the model that have been underway for the past several years, and we will be detailing them further in our forthcoming model methodology update.
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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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Policymakers should have two priorities in the upcoming economic policy debates: a larger economy and fiscal responsibility. Principled, pro-growth tax policy can help accomplish both.
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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.
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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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.
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Bond markets are screaming for a return to deficit reduction politics. Unfortunately, most policymakers are failing to listen to what the markets are telling them.
Pillar Two implementation is underway in many jurisdictions, and many governments are aiming to get their proposals approved before the end of 2023. However, estimating Pillar Two’s impact on government revenue is proving difficult. As a result, only a few countries have publicly presented their findings.
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As increased political attention focuses on the state of the American worker, expect to see a resurgence of the argument that the labor share of income is in decline.
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Now is the time for lawmakers to focus on long-term fiscal sustainability, as further delay will only make an eventual fiscal reckoning that much harder and more painful. Congressional leaders should follow through on convening a fiscal commission to deal with the long-term budgetary challenges facing the country.
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A growing international tax agreement known as Pillar Two presents two new threats to the US tax base: potential lost revenue and limitations on Congress’s ability to set its own tax policy.
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Details and analysis of the latest House GOP tax plan, the American Families and Jobs Act. Learn more about the House Republican tax plan.
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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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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.
The price tag of the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax credits is much higher than originally thought. Among other things, the updated analysis indicates the Inflation Reduction Act does not reduce deficits after all.
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Making expensing permanent is especially important now, when the economy is threatened with a recession and inflation remains high.
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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.
Rather than continue down the path of growing debt, lawmakers should craft a comprehensive solution. International experience cautions against tax-based fiscal consolidations, but modest tax increases may be part of a successful debt reduction package.
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While research on optimal taxation often focuses on the pure economic implications, it rarely considers cultural and societal differences that can lead to very different outcomes when trying to implement an optimal tax system.
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In our latest report, we consider several theoretical arguments for carbon taxes and the evidence from carbon taxes implemented around the world related to emissions, economic growth, distribution and revenue recycling options, other environmental taxes, green subsidies, and environmental regulations.
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Our recent policy conference brought together academics and political leaders to present research on some of the most pressing issues in global tax policy and to discuss solutions that can unlock genuine global growth.
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The overall U.S. tax and transfer system is overwhelmingly progressive, and understanding the extent—and source—of that progressivity is essential for lawmakers considering the trade-offs associated with each tax policy decision.
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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.
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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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.
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