Brief

Federal tax law provides substantial tax incentives for retirement saving. These include the deferral of taxes on contributions to retirement savings accounts by employers, employees, and self-employed taxpayers and the earnings on these contributions until the funds are withdrawn in retirement...

May 11, 2020
Eric ToderSurachai KhitatrakunAravind Boddupalli
Brief

On March 30, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of President Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2021. The president submitted this budget on February 10, 2020, when the pandemic was in its early stages in the US and before the enactment of major relief bills in...

May 7, 2020
Erald KolasiC. Eugene Steuerle
Brief

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak will dramatically affect state tax revenues over the next months and possibly years. This brief summarizes how state revenue forecasters viewed their state economies before the COVID-19 pandemic, as documented in governors’ proposed...

April 2, 2020
Lucy Dadayan
Brief

In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its first economic and budgetary outlook of the decade. Even prior to the recent COVID-19 crisis, along with its attendant impact on the budget, CBO projected a deficit of more than $1 trillion for fiscal year 2020. The federal budget is...

March 27, 2020
Erald KolasiC. Eugene Steuerle
Brief

In this brief, we estimate the revenue and distributional effects of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign tax proposals. We show the revenue and distributional implications of tax proposals excluding those related to his Medicare for All plan. We also report the revenue estimates (but not the...

March 19, 2020
TPC Staff
Brief

Policymakers continue to grapple with the related issues of unequal incomes, relatively poor health, education, and economic outcomes for low-income children, and hardship among low- and...

June 1, 2020
Elaine MaagNikhita Airi
Brief

In this brief, we estimate the revenue and distributional effects of former vice president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign tax proposals, based on information released by the Biden campaign and conversations with campaign staff. We analyze Biden’s proposals as of February 23, 2020...

March 5, 2020
Gordon B. MerminSurachai KhitatrakunChenxi LuThornton MathesonJeffrey Rohaly
Brief

In recognition of the important work family caregivers do, the Economic Security Project (ESP) has proposed that they be eligible for the cost-of-living refund, an expansion of the earned income tax credit (EITC). Among other changes to the EITC, the cost-of-living refund would extend benefits...

January 30, 2020
Elaine MaagMelissa M. FavreaultNikhita Airi
Brief

Congress and the president have put the federal budget on track for unsustainable and rising deficits without end. Mandatory spending programs—those that continue automatically without new appropriations—are expanding at a faster rate than discretionary spending programs, while total spending...

January 27, 2020
Erald KolasiC. Eugene Steuerle
Brief

Tax expenditures are the revenue losses attributable to special provisions in tax laws that reduce taxes for certain sources or uses of income or for certain groups of taxpayers. They are called tax expenditures because many of them effectively serve the same function as direct spending programs...

January 22, 2020
Frank SammartinoEric Toder