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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Inflation last year reached its highest level in the United States since 1981. As a result, the IRS announced the largest inflation adjustment for individual...
Starting in 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) dramatically raised the standard deduction, reducing the number of filers who reported their...
In response to two recent mass shootings, Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) introduced a bill that would impose a 1,000 percent excise tax on certain guns...
The synthetic control method (SCM) is a relatively new and valuable tool that makes it possible to measure state or local policy against a theoretical...
President Joe Biden and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) have proposed different ways to tax unrealized capital gains every year. Their shared goal...
In response to rising gas prices, Maryland suspended its gas tax for 30 days. Connecticut and Georgia also have created gas tax holidays and lawmakers...
While average effective tax rates barely changed in the US from 1945 to 2015, the average tax rates of high-income households fell sharply—from about 50...
President Biden’s campaign promise never to raise taxes on those making $400,000 or less annually will inevitably conflict with his proposal to tax unrealized capital...
President Biden’s American Families Plan would make two big changes in the tax treatment of investment income such as long-term capital gains and dividends. Some...
In 2017 and again in 2020, Congress made deficient—but temporary—changes to the federal income tax deduction for charitable giving. By significantly increasing the standard deduction,...
During each presidential election, the Tax Policy Center analyzes the tax policies of the two major candidates. This year, TPC estimated the effects of Democratic...
For the individual income tax, effective tax rates — measured as federal income tax divided by adjusted gross income (AGI) —have fallen significantly over the...
