In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in National Bellas Hess v. Department of Revenue of Illinois, that a business must have a physical presence within a state’s borders for the state to collect sales taxes from that business. In 1992, the court reaffirmed the physical presence requirement in Quill...

Tax and transfer programs can create significant bonuses and penalties for low- and moderate-income cohabiters with children. We find that federal tax laws can create marriage penalties that reach almost 10 percent of earnings for our hypothetical couples earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year. In...

After one year of the Trump administration, we assess the fiscal path implied by budget policies that the president and Congress have so far put in place. Using a new framework that holds lawmakers accountable for reforms taken and not taken, we project that over the coming decade, nearly all...

On February 15, 2018, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) requested specific information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on its oversight activities of nonprofit hospitals. In this brief, to provide evidence well beyond what the IRS considers, I present a new tool...

Widespread and profound public misinformation about government presents a serious challenge to democratic accountability. This paper demonstrates that two of the most common examples of public misperception may be systematically overestimated; public misperceptions of “foreign aid” spending and...

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 brief surveys research on the effect of estate and inheritance taxes on entrepreneurship and presents new evidence. We find that...

Unemployment insurance (UI) helps workers smooth their consumption after employment loss, but may also diminish their incentive to quickly find new jobs, thereby lengthening spells of unemployment and raising the aggregate unemployment rate. Less appreciated is the effect that UI has on...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 allows owners of certain pass-through businesses (such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations) to take a new deduction. However, the structure of the deduction is complicated because its generosity depends on many factors, such as the nature...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), under the conference agreement, would reduce taxes on average for all income groups. However, not all taxpayers would benefit to the same degree, and some would pay higher taxes. Even taxpayers with the same income could pay different amounts of tax depending...

The Tax Policy Center has released an analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as passed by Congress. We find the legislation would boost US gross domestic product (GDP) 0.8 percent in 2018 and would have little effect on GDP in 2027 or 2037. The resulting increase in...