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Individual Tax Expenditures, Credits, and Deductions

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2024 tax brackets IRS inflation adjustments for tax year 2024 in early 2025 tax filing season

2024 Tax Brackets

Explore the IRS inflation-adjusted 2024 tax brackets, for which taxpayers will file tax returns in early 2025.

4 min read
Details and Analysis of Making 2017 Tax Reform Permanent

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
2023 European Tax Policy Scorecard Tax Foundation Europe

2023 European Tax Policy Scorecard

The variety of approaches to taxation among European countries creates a need to evaluate these systems relative to each other. For that purpose, we have developed the European Tax Policy Scorecard—a relative comparison of European countries’ tax systems.

52 min read
2024 State Business Tax Climate Index

2024 State Business Tax Climate Index

In recognition of the fact that there are better and worse ways to raise revenue, our Index focuses on how state tax revenue is raised, not how much. The rankings, therefore, reflect how well states structure their tax systems.

111 min read

International Tax Competitiveness Index 2023

While there are many factors that affect a country’s economic performance, taxes play an important role. A well-structured tax code is easy for taxpayers to comply with and can promote economic development while raising sufficient revenue for a government’s priorities.

88 min read
Federal deficit grew to $2 trillion in FY 2023 Federal Budget Deficit Data and Projections

Federal Deficit Grew to $2 Trillion in FY 2023

Outside of the pandemic years, this year’s federal deficit is the highest in U.S. history. While tax revenue has increased about 28 percent since the pre-pandemic year 2019, spending has increased about 46 percent. Annual deficits are headed towards $3 trillion over the next few years.

3 min read
Nonprofits are Financially Healthy and Doing Big Business Nonprofit Hospitals and Universities Untaxed Income

Nonprofits are Financially Healthy and Doing Big Business

Can an organization rightfully be called a “nonprofit” if it almost always makes money? And what if most of that organization’s income comes from “business income,” should it legitimately be considered a “charity”?

7 min read
Details and analysis of European Tax Trends and European Tax Reforms

Tax Trends in European Countries

In recent years, European countries have undertaken a series of tax reforms designed to maintain tax revenue levels while protecting households and businesses from high inflation.

8 min read
Tax Foundation experts analyze ways to rein in the national debt, including US debt and deficits and federal budget and US spending and taxes

How to Rein in the National Debt

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.

35 min read
Distribution of major US individual income tax credits on IRS tax form 1040

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
Child Tax Credit Reform Debate Continues Tax Cuts and Jobs Act TCJA Expiration and tax policy trade-offs Family Security Act Mitt Romney and Brookings Hamilton Project

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