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.
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If tax increases are included in a package, international experience points toward raising consumption taxes, rationalizing tax expenditures, and broadening the tax base—not hiking income taxes.
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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.
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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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In addition to the federal estate tax, with a top rate of 40 percent, some states levy an additional estate or inheritance tax.
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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”?
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The 2023 Spanish Regional Tax Competitiveness Index allows policymakers and taxpayers to evaluate and measure how their regions’ tax systems compare.
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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.
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Any move to repeal the cap or enhance the deduction would disproportionately benefit higher earners, making the tax code more regressive.
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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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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.
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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.
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Starting on September 1st, federal student loan payments will resume after a three-and-a-half-year pause on payments and accrued interest following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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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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Explore IRS clean energy tax credits, including Direct Pay, the IRA and CHIPS Act tax provisions, and Section 1603 grant program. See more.
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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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At least 32 notable tax policy changes recently took effect across 18 states, including alterations to income taxes, payroll taxes, sales and use taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes. See if your state tax code changed.
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Short FormWhat does the tax reform package do well? What does it do poorly? How would it affect me?
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As fiscal year 2023 draws to a close, North Carolina’s House and Senate have each passed their own versions of the biennial budget for fiscal years 2024-25. While legislative leaders have generally agreed to overall spending levels, negotiations remain ongoing to resolve different approaches to tax policy.
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Texas’s robust surpluses create an opportunity to use state funds to lower local property taxes. However, it remains important for legislators to pursue a principled approach to rate compression, rather than enacting a plan that will simply shift the tax burden in nonneutral ways.
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