Tax Policy Center

Experts

Robert McClelland

Senior Fellow

I was raised to believe that our first allegiance must be to the truth. In the past I’ve been fortunate to work for federal agencies that present facts and data in a nonpartisan fashion. I’m now excited to work at the Urban Institute, where I can similarly apply an evidence-based approach to important policy questions.

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Brief

In 2022, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced the largest inflation adjustment in decades. This brief reviews the history of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and federal income taxes, including the indexing of the tax code in the early 1980s. It also describes the chained CPI, which is...

February 17, 2023
Robert McClelland
Research report

In 2017, the Tax Policy Center published “The Synthetic Control Method as a Tool to Understand State Policy,” a guide for using the synthetic control method (SCM) as a quantitative adjunct to case studies. With it, analysts can evaluate cases in which there is a single treated unit and no...

May 31, 2022
Robert McClellandLivia Mucciolo
Brief

In 2010, Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller used the synthetic control method to analyze a cigarette tax implemented in California in 1988. Since then, this method has been increasingly popular, with the original article garnering more than four thousand citations. Part of the synthetic control...

May 31, 2022
Robert McClellandLivia Mucciolo
Brief

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) dramatically changed tax law, including how taxpayers deduct the interest on their home mortgages. It narrowed the deduction in several ways, so we would expect new mortgages to be smaller than old ones. But it also raised most taxpayers’ after-tax...

March 30, 2022
Robert McClellandLivia MuccioloSafia Sayed
Research report

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) dramatically changed tax law. It narrowed the subsidy on mortgage interest in several ways, which should lower mortgages and home prices; it also increased most taxpayers’ after-tax incomes, which should have the opposite effect. Thus, the TCJA’s overall...

March 30, 2022
Robert McClellandLivia MuccioloSafia Sayed
Brief

Because of the small share of the population currently eligible for itemized tax deductions for charitable giving, many charities have argued that a more universal charitable deduction or tax credit should exist. A more universal subsidy could (but would not necessarily) increase significantly...

March 17, 2021
C. Eugene SteuerleRobert McClellandNikhita AiriChenxi LuAravind Boddupalli
Research report

The Statistics of Income division of the Internal Revenue Service releases an annual public-use file of individual income tax returns that is invaluable to tax analysts in government agencies, nonprofit research organizations, and the private sector. However, the Statistics of Income division...

November 11, 2020
Claire BowenVictoria L. BryantLeonard E. BurmanSurachai KhitatrakunGraham MacDonaldRobert McClellandPhilip StallworthKyle UeyamaAaron R. WilliamsNoah Zwiefel
Research report

The earned income tax credit (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC) provide substantial benefits to working families with children. The EITC also provides modest benefits to workers without custodial children, often called “childless workers” for tax purposes. Together, the credits lift almost 9...

July 23, 2020
Elaine MaagRobert McClellandC. Eugene Steuerle

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