From 1965 to 2022, the share of outstanding U.S. stock held in taxable brokerage and mutual fund accounts declined from 79 percent to 27 percent, as reflected in data from the financial accounts of the U.S. government collected by the Federal Reserve. The share of publicly traded stock held in...
In this brief, we describe the features of the US tax system that favor buybacks over dividends. We also estimate the size of those tax advantages. In the absence of any excise taxes, we calculate the US tax advantage for buybacks over dividends would be 7.2 percent. About two-thirds of the...
In the US Supreme Court case Moore v United States, shareholders in a “controlled” foreign corporation challenge a tax on income they had not yet received. But a ruling in their favor could upend decades of rules to curb tax avoidance in international and capital markets. As a matter of...
The “tax gap”—the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount of tax actually paid—includes substantial gray areas where the law is ambiguous and the IRS’s determination of taxes owed is debatable. Understanding the tax gap’s shades of gray can inform discussions of tax law and...
The “tax gap”—the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount of tax actually paid—includes substantial gray areas where the law is ambiguous and the IRS’s determination of taxes owed is debatable. Understanding the tax gap’s shades of gray can inform discussions of tax law and...
Steven M Rosenthal, senior fellow, testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, Oversight Subcommittee at a hearing on “Tax Fairness.” In his testimony, he examines President’s Trump’s reported taxes as a case study. Mr. Rosenthal assesses tax fairness through...
Steven M. Rosenthal, Senior Fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, testified before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight during a hearing entitled “Legislative Proposals and Tax Law Related to Presidential and Vice-Presidential Tax Returns.” In his testimony, Rosenthal...
This year, Congress will consider what may be the biggest tax bill in decades. This is one of a series of briefs the Tax Policy Center has prepared to help people follow the debate. Each focuses on a key tax policy issue that Congress and the Trump administration may address. This brief walks...
In Loper Bright , a case about the environmental regulation of fishing boats, the Supreme Court overruled the Chevron doctrine , which required courts to...
The Supreme Court upheld Congress’s taxing authority, at least for taxing undistributed corporate profits. But what about Congress’s authority to tax other unreceived profits, like unrealized capital gains or other capital income?
Foreign investors, retirement accounts, and other tax-exempt entities now dominate US stock ownership. This shift has important implications for understanding who wins and who loses...
Bloomberg recently reported on an exchange traded fund (ETF) with the ticker symbol BOXX that exploits various tax rules to transform what’s effectively interest income,...
In the United States’ voluntary tax system, taxpayers are responsible for correctly reporting their incomes to the IRS, rather than having the government determine their...
Companies now spend more than a $1 trillion annually to repurchase their stock, in lieu of paying higher dividends to their shareholders, or investing more...
Third-party payment platforms such as Airbnb, eBay, and PayPal found a surprise gift from the Biden Administration in their Christmas stockings last month—one that likely...
The New York Times reported that Chicago businessman Barre Seid donated his entire business, tax free, to the Marble Freedom Trust, a tax-exempt advocacy organization...
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) approved by Congress last week included a new 1 percent stock buyback excise tax on US publicly traded corporations. Many...
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...
The “tax gap”—the difference between taxes owed to the government and taxes actually collected—often is equated with evasion . But the tax gap is more...
In a recent report co-authored with University of Chicago Professor Daniel Hemel, I described how our retirement tax system favors the rich disproportionately. But it’s...
Mega-IRAs are hot this summer, following a June 2021 report by the nonprofit news service ProPublica that revealed—based on leaked IRS files—that a handful of...
In his American Families Plan, President Biden unveiled a tax compliance initiative aimed at closing the gap between taxes that are owed and what are...
Last week, a group of prominent academic and government economists published a study that estimated the top 1 percent of Americans hide more than 20...
Our new analysis shows that foreign investors owned about 40 percent of US corporate equity in 2019, up substantially over the last few decades. Retirement...
Yesterday, I testified before the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight on “tax fairness,” and the hearing spotlighted the reporting of new details on President...
