I love working on public finance issues and seeing their endless application to so many budget, tax, spending, and charitable issues that go well beyond what can be found in any textbook. I am drawn to Urban because in my view, it leads the nation in so many areas of research—combining its talents for evaluating a broad spectrum of public policy issues, gathering and using related data from a range of sources, and integrating research across disparate program areas; and all the while maintaining a truly nonpartisan approach to analysis, a deep culture of respect for each member of the organization, and a strong commitment to serve the public through its work.
Nothing so exemplifies the American Dream than the possibility for each family to get ahead and, through hard work and faithful service, advance from generation to generation. Today mobility across generations is threatened by three aspects of current federal policy: a budget for a declining...
Gene Steuerle testifies before the House Subcommittees on Human Resources and Select Revenue Measures on the true marginal tax rates facing low- and moderate-income families. The nations real tax system includes not just the direct statutory rates explicit in the income tax and the Social...
Realized income is a widely accepted measure of well-being. This paper examines the relationship between realized income and wealth and economic income, using a national sample of income tax returns matched with estate tax returns to compare the realized property income of individuals with the...
This brief attempts to access the trends in charitable giving and how the current economic turmoil has affected the nonprofit sector - the main topic of an August 2011 roundtable hosted by the Tax Policy and Charities project at the Urban Institute. Twenty-five experts on tax policy and the...
This article was published as part of the Tax Note series "The Legacy of the TRA '86." As current budget pressure forces us to consider tax reform as a means of raising revenue, past reforms provide us some valuable lessons. Reforms typically begin with a consensus that something is broken and...
Eugene Steuerle testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on "Tax Reform Options: Incentives for Charitable Giving," presenting options on how to increase tax revenues with minimal impact or perhaps even an increase in charitable giving. Among other recommendations, he suggests a floor under...
Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2010, a fifth annual report, looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. This appendix details our data sources, the programs we include, and the methodology used to estimate the percentage of...
Gene Steuerle testifies on alternative ways to restore solvency and undertake benefit reforms in Social Security, concentrating on four: restricting automatic growth in benefits where needs are least, adjusting benefits so they both encourage employment and are concentrated more in older ages,...
The individual income tax contains multiple provisions that favor families with children. They range from credits targeted towards low-income families to deductions that favor higher income families. Some provisions benefit a family by virtue of the family having children, others try to...
The Congressional Budget Office and government actuaries for decades have shown that Social Security and Medicare remain on unsustainable tracks, but it is often hard...
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Biden recently agreed to cut back on some of the increased IRS funding enacted through last year’s Inflation...
The recent compromise between Republicans and Democrats on extending the federal debt limit was hailed for avoiding the disaster of a default, demonstrating that both...
Like all presidential budgets, President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 proposals reflect the priorities he would set for the nation. As in prior years, Biden would...
While Congress talks about the federal debt, it’s still hesitating to deal with one major source of rising deficits—Medicare—that it can’t avoid much longer. Medicare’s...
During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Congress substantially increased benefits for children, including big boosts in the Child Tax Credit...
In just 13 years, Social Security trust funds will be unable to pay full promised benefits. Unfortunately, a House bill with broad bipartisan support could...
It’s always tempting to exaggerate the importance of the latest big fight in Congress. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) made some major policy...
The new minimum tax on the income that very large corporations report to their shareholders is the revenue centerpiece of the recently enacted Inflation Reduction...
President Trump was afraid to tackle the dominant set of spending and tax issues facing the federal government. Ditto, so far, for President Biden. Under...
Among its many changes, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act substantially increased the share of federal income taxpayers taking the standard deduction, leaving fewer...
Policymakers and even policy analysts often consider the progressivity of specific proposals independently from the broader systems in which they operate. Consequently, they often leave...
When Congress increases spending and cuts taxes then fails to extend the nation’s debt limit, it effectively orders the president to run deficits while prohibiting...
Buried in today’s partisan squabbles over President Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda is a fundamental question: How can government best increase the nation’s wealth? Does it...
A key feature of President Biden’s effort to expand government support for low-income families is its increase in the earned income tax credit (EITC) for...
Most Social Security reform proposals have focused on one goal: restoring the program’s long-run fiscal balance. Yet under all recent proposed restructurings we have examined—whether...
The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying recession laid bare many of the needs of working families and children, as well as federal, state, and local governments’...
When Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan (ARP), it included an implicit deal: It agreed to reduce the level of additional future weekly federal unemployment...
In 2017 and again in 2020, Congress made deficient—but temporary—changes to the federal income tax deduction for charitable giving. By significantly increasing the standard deduction,...
