Small businesses occupy an iconic place in American public policy debates. This paper discusses interactions between the federal tax code, small business, and the economy. We summarize the characteristics of small businesses, identify the tax provisions that most affect small businesses, and...

The often overlooked municipal debt market has attracted considerable attention lately amid predictions of widespread local government defaults and changes to the federal tax exemption for municipal bonds. This paper explains essential features of muni bonds and assesses recent policy and market...

The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program targets debt and equity capital to businesses or organizations situated in low-income, economically distressed communities. This is a report on a diverse sample of five projects that utilized New Markets Tax Credits allocated early in the program's...

The federal individual income tax has had many more brackets and much higher rates in the past than it does today. In 1958, for example, there were 24 brackets (versus 6 today) and the top rate was 91 percent (versus 35 percent today). The impact of more brackets and higher rates on taxpayers...

The earned income tax credit (EITC) is the most effective antipoverty program targeted to working-age households, delivering $60 annually. Critics note a relatively high error rate – with errors often stemming from complicated rules about who counts as a “qualifying child”. We analyze data from...

Over the past seventy years Congress has enacted dozens of tax and transfer programs, giving little if any attention to the marriage subsidies and penalties that they inadvertently impose. Although the programs affect both rich and poor Americans, the penalties fall most heavily on low- or...

The Urban-Brookings microsimulation tax model is a powerful tool for federal tax policy analysis. The model calculates tax liability for a representative sample of households, both under the rules that currently exist (current law) and under alternative scenarios. Based on these calculations,...

Corrective taxes can encourage healthier, safer, and less polluting behavior. But how should governments use their revenue? Options abound to cut other taxes, boost spending, or reduce borrowing. We organize those uses into four categories: offsetting new burdens, furthering the same goal,...

Small business is the source of our entrepreneurial genius, creativity, and productivity. Nonetheless, a substantial portion of our economic activity occurs within large corporations, non-profits and public enterprises. This paper discusses how the federal income tax treats firms of different...

In 1979, federal taxes claimed 8 percent of the income of households in the lowest quintile of the income distribution.1 Over the following three decades, the average
effective tax rate (ETR) taxes as a percentage of income fell by nearly half to 4.3 percent in 2005. Most of the decline...