As people live longer, they spend more time in retirement, straining Social Security’s finances. This brief outlines the implications of three approaches to adjusting Social Security for longer lives: making no adjustment, which has applied over most of Social Security’s history; keeping...

Adjusting Social Security retirement ages as people live longer would significantly improve trust fund balances over the long run, though it would have only modest effects in the short term. By the 75th year, Social Security actuaries project that raising the retirement age by indexing it to...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) missed an opportunity to help low-income childless workers, very low-income families with children, and families with young children – all groups where investments could be particularly productive. The child tax credit (CTC) and earned income tax credit (EITC)...

This brief addresses issues relating to the creation of border carbon adjustments (BCAs) as part of a carbon tax. A carbon tax that is imposed only in the U.S. could put American firms at a competitive disadvantage. A BCA could level the playing field so that U.S. and foreign-firms face the same...

Supreme Court rulings in 2013 and 2015 established and expanded rights to same-sex marriage in the U.S. One of the most visible and impactful ways the federal government recognized these new rights was by allowing—indeed, requiring—legally-married same-sex couples to file federal tax returns as...

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in National Bellas Hess v. Department of Revenue of Illinois, that a business must have a physical presence within a state’s borders for the state to collect sales taxes from that business. In 1992, the court reaffirmed the physical presence requirement in Quill...

Tax and transfer programs can create significant bonuses and penalties for low- and moderate-income cohabiters with children. We find that federal tax laws can create marriage penalties that reach almost 10 percent of earnings for our hypothetical couples earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year. In...

After one year of the Trump administration, we assess the fiscal path implied by budget policies that the president and Congress have so far put in place. Using a new framework that holds lawmakers accountable for reforms taken and not taken, we project that over the coming decade, nearly all...

On February 15, 2018, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) requested specific information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on its oversight activities of nonprofit hospitals. In this brief, to provide evidence well beyond what the IRS considers, I present a new tool...