Treasury Department Archive

Volunteer Tax Prep Is A Crash Course in Pandemic Tax Policy
April 25, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares A few Tax Policy Center staffers and I spend tax season volunteering for the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, providing free tax preparation services to low-income filers. You do not need to be a tax expert to volunteer at a VITA site (it’s like an open-book test), but assisting actual people,

The State Giveth And The State Taketh Away
April 25, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Disney, DeSantis and that special tax district. After the Walt Disney Corporation criticized a new Florida law that bans discussions of gender issues in many public school classrooms, Gov. Ron DeSantis retaliated with legislation to dissolve a special taxing district managed by Disney since 1967. Disney pays about $163 million a year to

Kansas Food Tax: Research & Analysis
April 22, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares This legislative session, the sales tax on food has garnered a great deal of attention in Kansas, with policymakers on both sides of the aisle proposing the removal of groceries from the sales tax base. While this issue has long been a subject of debate in Kansas, it has gained increased attention this

Biden Prescription Drug Pricing & Price Controls
April 20, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares A centerpiece of the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) as passed by the House last year was drug pricing legislation, which could be included in the next version of the BBBA, now rebranded as an inflation-control, climate, and deficit-reduction bill. While headline inflation is at an alarming rate, with the most recent 12-month

Missouri Tax Reform Could Give State Competitive Edge
April 20, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Tax reform has become a major focus for state legislatures this session, and Missouri lawmakers are tuned in to the action: after adjusting individual income tax triggers in 2021, the legislature is exploring further tax reform options. Senate Bill 739 would create an additional tax trigger mechanism for the individual income tax, while

French Election: Macron vs. Le Pen
April 20, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares The second round of voting in the French presidential election will be 24 April between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen. Although tax policy has not been a central theme of the campaign due to the war in Ukraine, immigration debates, and cost of living issues, the winner’s policy

States Forecast Weaker Revenue Growth Ahead of Growing Uncertainties
April 19, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Just as state governors and legislators are figuring out how to spend their unexpected budget surpluses, global events could wipe out much of those gains in fiscal year 2023. State revenue growth was strong in fiscal year 2021, despite widespread economic disruptions caused by the global pandemic. But it appears the current fiscal

Wealth Taxes in Europe, 2022
April 19, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares Net wealth taxes are recurrent taxes on an individual’s wealth, net of debt. The concept of a net wealth tax is similar to a real property tax. But instead of only taxing real estate, it covers all wealth an individual owns. As today’s map shows, only three European OECD countries levy a net wealth

EU VAT Reform: Benefits of Principled Tax Policy
April 19, 2022
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TweetShareSharePin0 Shares “New own resources should fulfil the criteria of simplicity, transparency, predictability, and fairness.” One would think that the above recommendation came from a Tax Foundation report on principled EU own resources policy. While we would like to claim credit, the recommendation, rather, comes from the EU’s own 2016 Monti report and more recently,

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