Tax Policy Center

Experts

Adam Carasso

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Brief

The Earned Income Tax Credit enjoyed marked success bringing low-income women into the labor force in recent years. At the same time, labor force participation by low-income or less-education men stagnated, and declined among young black men. In response to these labor market conditions, this...

October 22, 2008
Adam CarassoHarry HolzerElaine MaagC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report

Individual giving to public charities-most of which comes in the form of charitable deductions from tax filers who itemize on their returns-actually comprises only a small part of charities gross receipts each year: between 8 and 12 percent of gross receipts over the 1996-2003 period.

January 16, 2006
Elizabeth BellAdam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report

The panoply of U.S. tax and transfer programs often act in concert to penalize low-income families who increase their work effort or marry, by saddling them with high effective marginal tax rates. These effective marginal tax rates-often the product of multiple, hidden phase-outs in benefit...

October 10, 2005
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report

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...

September 13, 2005
Adam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle
Research report

Some of the costliest tax expenditures the federal government allows go to subsidizing homeownership. In 2004, the total tax expenditure value of the mortgage interest deduction was $70.2 billion while the value for the real estate tax deduction was $19.3 billion. Fifty-four percent of these...

August 1, 2005
Adam Carasso
Research report

The employer exclusion of contributions for medical insurance premiums and medical care from employee income taxes is the single largest tax expenditure in the federal budget, worth $112 billion in fiscal year 2005. Even when adjusting for growth in medical prices, the employer exclusion still...

June 27, 2005
Adam Carasso
Research report

Tax programs that provide deductions to homeowners or credits to both builders and owners, greatly exceed direct federal outlays on housing. The beneficiaries of these tax programs tend to be middle-to-upper income families who own their homes while the recipients of outlays tend to be lower...

February 28, 2005
Adam CarassoC. Eugene SteuerleElizabeth Bell
Research report

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,...

January 10, 2005
Jeffrey RohalyAdam CarassoMohammed Adeel Saleem
Research report

To encourage saving for retirement, private pensions such as employer sponsored 401(k) plans or IRAs receive favorable tax treatment by the federal government. A major goal of such tax provisions is to increase personal saving. A measure of the value of these tax benefits is provided by the...

December 20, 2004
Elizabeth BellAdam CarassoC. Eugene Steuerle