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Adam Carasso

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Brief
Individual Taxes

How Progressive Is Social Security and Why?

Social Security was designed to redistribute income from those with higher lifetime earnings to those with lower lifetime earnings. The reason is obvious: the system was created to ensure an adequate retirement income for the elderly. Less obvious is how Social Security's many provisions...

May 1, 2004
C. Eugene SteuerleAdam CarassoLee Cohen
Research report
State and Local Issues

State and Local Receipts and Business Cycles

The behavior of state and local receipts around the end of a business cycle is historically mixed, but the last three recessions exhibit a common trend: receipts trail expenditures during the recession, and even a year or two afterwards.

March 1, 2004
C. Eugene SteuerleAdam Carasso
Research report
Federal Budget and Economy

Tax Expenditures: Revenue Loss Versus Outlay Equivalents

Tax expenditures refer to the revenue losses attributable to provisions of the federal tax laws that deviate from a "normal" tax on income. Although there are debates over precisely what a tax expenditure is, many exclusions, deductions, credits, preferential rates, and deferrals of tax...

October 13, 2003
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Brief
Federal Budget and Economy

Tax Reform for Families

[ Brookings Institution] This brief argues that the time is ripe for an integrated credit that combines the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the CTC into an Earned Income Child Credit (EICC). The proposed EICC simplifies and standardizes the definition of qualifying children and those...

July 1, 2003
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report
Business Taxes

The Corporate Income Tax In the Post-War Era

The corporate income tax has been in steady decline since World War II, reaching record lows during the recessions of the early 1980s and approaching those lows again in 2002.

March 3, 2003
Adam Carasso
Research report
Federal Budget and Economy

The President's Proposal to Accelerate the Child Tax Credit and Related Options

The Presidents January 7, 2003 economic stimulus proposal for enhancing the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) would, in addition to ending the corporate taxation of dividends and speeding up tax rate and marriage penalty relief, accelerate the increase in the...

January 31, 2003
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report
Federal Budget and Economy

Growth in the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits

The last decade has seen a surge in the use of the tax system to deliver dollars to families with children. As late as the early 1990s, the most important tax provision applying to children was the dependent exemption. For several decades, however, Congress failed to increase this exemption in...

January 20, 2003
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report
Federal Budget and Economy

A Brief History of the Top Tax Rate

When the income tax was first introduced in 1913, it boasted a top rate of a mere 7 percent on those earning above $500,000 (close to $9 million in 2002 dollars). For the nation's wealthiest taxpayers, this was as good as it was ever going to get - this state of affairs lasted just three years....

November 25, 2002
C. Eugene SteuerleAdam Carasso
Brief
Federal Budget and Economy

Saying 'I Do' after the 2001 Tax Cuts

Various provisions of the 2001 tax cut change the marriage penalties or subsidies lower- and middle-income households may face. We focus on the higher marriage penalties that heads of household filers marrying single filers often confront -- the loss of valuable children's tax benefits for which...

August 27, 2002
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle