This policy brief summarizes the impact of traditional individual retirement accounts and Roth individual retirement accounts on personal choices and on government finances. Although the accounts are equivalent under certain circumstances, in practice they often differ in important ways for both...

This report analyzes a straightforward mechanism to mitigate middle-class wage stagnation: a wage tax credit of 100 percent of earnings up to a maximum credit of $10,000, called a universal earned income tax credit. The child tax credit would increase from $2,000 to $2,500 and be made fully...

Despite its relatively small role in the federal taxation system—accounting for less than 1 percent of revenues—the estate and gift tax is controversial. This paper surveys evidence on the effect of estate and inheritance taxes on entrepreneurship and presents some new evidence. We use the...

Using data from several sources, we show that the vast majority of corporate income is not double-taxed in the United States. We estimate that the taxable share of U.S. corporate equity has declined dramatically in recent years, from over 80 percent in 1965 to about 30 percent at present. We...