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...

How big is your retirement package? Benefits from government retirement programs—Social Security and Medicare—vary over time, but the trend has been toward higher lifetime benefits for each successive cohort. Expansion derives mainly from increases in real annual benefits, more years of benefits...

The federal income tax is replete with tax expenditures, provisions that grant special benefits to selected taxpayers or for selected activities. Exclusions and deductions reduce taxable income, preferential rates cut the tax on specific types of income, and tax credits are subtracted directly...

Tax policy has been a major issue in the Presidential election campaign, with both candidates proposing extensive changes. The candidates take very different approaches to tax policy. The main differences are two: first, McCain's plans would reduce revenues by significantly more than Obama's;...

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...

Kids' Share 2012: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2011, a sixth annual report, looks comprehensively at trends over the past 50 years in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. Key findings suggest that the size and composition of expenditures on children...

Opposition to the ACA’s “Cadillac” tax is growing. This excise tax applies to employer health benefits exceeding a threshold. There has been broader support over time for a cap on the tax exclusion of employer contributions to health insurance, including from many who now want to repeal the...

States and non-profit organizations have used three approaches to successfully integrate enrollment and retention of health and human services programs:

1. Streamlining one program's eligibility determination based on data from other programs. This approach has helped uninsured...