Americans will spend 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026, costing about $387 billion in lost productivity. Including an additional $157 billion in out-of-pocket costs, complying with the federal tax code will cost Americans more than $544 billion this year, over 1.7 percent of GDP.
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On September 15th, Canada announced that full expensing for machinery, equipment, and patent rights will be made permanent and broadened from around 15 percent to two thirds of business capital investment.
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While economic levers like sanctions and tariffs have long been recognized as geoeconomic tools, tax policies have rarely been considered a part of this toolkit.
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Policymakers considering AI-specific token or compute taxes can learn from the “bit tax” proposals of the 1990s during the rise of the internet.
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Investment in digital assets, long thought of as a niche interest reserved for enthusiasts, has broken into the mainstream. In 2026, about one in five US adults report being invested in or using cryptocurrency.
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Utah’s targeted advertising tax is not identical to Maryland’s, but it shares key characteristics that make it vulnerable to the same challenges that sank Maryland’s tax, starting with a clash with the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA).
The Belgian proposal departs significantly from sound tax policy principles and risks generating substantial economic distortions, legal uncertainty, and trade frictions while raising relatively little revenue.
The new public country-by-country reporting regimes adopted by the EU and Australia, and changes from the Financial Accounting Standards Board for financial accounts, are meant to promote transparency by multinational enterprises but have ubiquitous structural differences.
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Privacy concerns are a primary driver of opposition to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax systems, but VMT taxes do not need to invade drivers’ privacy to efficiently fund the roads.
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The Maryland Tax Court has struck down the state’s digital advertising tax and ordered that refunds be paid to taxpayers for five and a half years’ worth of collections under the unconstitutional tax.
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In June, the Dominican Republic rushed through a package of tax legislation in seven days. International examples demonstrate that consultation, transparency, and clarity are key factors for successful tax reform.
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If Canada doesn’t make these provisions permanent, it will drop to 12th place in the capital cost recovery ranking once provisions expire in 2034.
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Poland taxes its individual business owners through alternative regimes and a series of thresholds, several of them sharp notches that imply significant tax costs for businesses crossing them.
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The highest state tax on cigarettes is levied by New York at $5.35 per pack of 20. The next highest tax jurisdiction is the District of Columbia at $5.07 per pack of cigarettes, followed closely by Maryland at $5.00 per pack, Rhode Island at $4.50 per pack, and Connecticut at $4.35 per pack.
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If voters approve Amendment 5 on the primary election ballot this August, Missouri policymakers must pass legislation to gradually phase out the state’s income tax while choosing how to pay for this goal.
The EU Tax Omnibus proposal would create an EU-wide minimum standard for full expensing, but it confines that standard to qualifying tangible assets used in research and development (R&D) rather than to broader asset classes.
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Retail prices make poor targets for excise tax policy, often reflecting factors that have little to do with the underlying reasons for which an excise tax is levied in the first place. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a growing preference for using tax share of retail price (tax incidence) as a primary policy target.
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Policymakers are increasingly considering taxes on data processing and other businesses’ digital services, but these taxes increase costs at many stages of the production process for virtually all businesses, not just tech-oriented businesses.
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Because withholding taxes can create double taxation and administrative friction even where foreign tax credits are available, the European Commission’s 2026 Tax Omnibus proposal to eliminate them on dividend, interest, and royalty payments between EU companies regardless of holding percentage would foster stronger cross-border savings and investment.
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NYC’s congestion tolling has reduced congestion, raised money for the MTA, and sped up vehicles in the city. Its success has inspired proposals for congestion tolling in other major US cities, like Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
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