In this brief, we describe the features of the US tax system that favor buybacks over dividends. We also estimate the size of those tax advantages. In the absence of any excise taxes, we calculate the US tax advantage for buybacks over dividends would be 7.2 percent. About two-thirds of the...

Although the US tax code does not explicitly reference race or ethnicity, the federal individual income tax can create racial disparities when factors that affect tax liability are associated with race. This paper provides new evidence on racial differences in marriage tax penalties and bonuses...

In 2022, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced the largest inflation adjustment in decades. This brief reviews the history of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and federal income taxes, including the indexing of the tax code in the early 1980s. It also describes the chained CPI, which is...

Benefits from the earned income tax credit (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC) play an important role in the financial lives of low- and moderate-income families. Determining how much credit a family qualifies for can be complicated, depending primarily on the number of eligible children, income,...