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...

Benefits from the earned income tax credit (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC) play an important role in the financial lives of low- and moderate-income families. Determining how much credit a family qualifies for can be complicated, depending primarily on the number of eligible children, income,...

Both the US and the UK experienced dramatic slowdowns in economic activity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each enacted large-scale responses targeted at workers, and in addition, the US extended direct cash aid broadly through economic impact payments (EIPs) and then to most parents with...

Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia passed significant tax cuts in calendar year 2022. However, the design and effect of those tax cuts varied significantly. Using the Tax Policy Center state income tax model, we analyzed three major types of individual income tax cuts—tax rate cuts...

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vast social and economic inequities in the US, which prompted unprecedented relief policies that, for one year, brought child poverty to its lowest levels in decades. However, as the economy enters a new phase of robust job growth, high inflation, and ongoing...