Federal Budget and Economy Archive

Why Another Brutal Filing Season for The IRS May Not Help It Get More Funding
April 18, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares The Internal Revenue Service has limped through yet another tax filing season, reduced to plugging staffing holes in customer service and returns processing by shifting workers around—and thus creating new tax administration gaps. Thanks to months-long delays in processing millions of 2020 tax returns, the agency’s most visible vulnerabilities have shifted from enforcement

Happy Birthday, TPC
April 1, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares On April 1, 2002, a press release announced, “The Tax Policy Center, a new joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution” was… Source link TweetShareSharePin0 Shares

Biden’s New Taxes for Billionaires: One Is Hard, One Is Easy
March 31, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares This week, President Biden proposed two new taxes on the very rich. A minimum income tax that Biden calls a billionaire tax but would in reality apply to households with a net worth of $100 million or more. And a separate tax at death on gains from appreciated assets, even if the assets

How the TCJA Affected the Housing Market
March 30, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was enacted, critics claimed that reducing the tax subsidy for mortgage interest would hurt home values. But new TPC research shows that the reduced deduction had very little effect on the size of new mortgages, suggesting that the changes in the TCJA have not substantively

Note To Governors: Cutting Taxes Will Make Inflation Worse, Not Better
March 15, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Even as Republican governors blast President Biden and congressional Democrats for both causing inflation and failing to address it, they are promoting their own tax cuts that likely will add to consumer demand and raise prices. Putting more money in people’s pockets will increase demand for goods at a time of supply shortages.

Are Current Hill Tax Plans Enough To Fund A Scaled-Back Climate And Social Spending Bill?
March 10, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares In a 50-50 Senate where every vote counts, President Biden’s “Build Back Better” (BBB) fiscal agenda has a new name and—if it wants the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)—a slimmed down mission. A new version still would include significant tax increases. But there are reasons to doubt they would produce a reliable

Higher Oil Prices Can Help Fuel Green Transition
March 1, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Democratic leaders have pledged to combat higher petroleum prices due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Shying away from a Russian oil boycott, they have proposed a federal gas tax holiday to cushion US motorists from rising pump prices. But that policy would do little to benefit consumers while worsening fiscal imbalances, air

How the Pandemic Affected the TCJA’s Shift to A Chained CPI Index
February 4, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changed the way parts of the tax code are indexed for inflation. Instead of using the standard inflation measure, the CPI-U, it shifted to what’s known as chained CPI, or C-CPI-U. At the time, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated this would raise federal revenue

Lessons from the 2009 Recovery Act for an Inclusive Recovery from the Pandemic
December 14, 2021
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares The federal government and many state and local governments are placing equity at the forefront of their pandemic relief efforts. But to effectively follow through on this important goal, policymakers can learn from initiatives undertaken in response to the Great Recession. In a new research brief, we described lessons from the 2009 American

The Short Run Growth and Inflation Effects of Build Back Better Are Likely to Be Very Modest
November 17, 2021
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares A key issue in the congressional debate over President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) plan is how it would affect the economy over the next couple of years. Identifying precise effects is unusually difficult due to the economic circumstances stemming from the pandemic. But the bill’s overall short-run effects on both growth and