Research report

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) annually delivers over $60 billion to low-income working families. The Office of Management and Budget identifies the EITC as having the highest improper payment rate among 13 high error programs. We explore whether state SNAP and TANF administrative data can...

June 3, 2015
Mike PergamitElaine MaagDevlin HansonCaroline RatcliffeSara EdelsteinSarah Minton
Research report

The Filer Voter experiment assessed the effectiveness of conducting voter registration drives at sites providing free income tax preparation assistance to low-and moderate-income households in Cleveland, OH, and Dallas, TX. We find that the program doubled the likelihood of unregistered tax...

April 2, 2019
Vanessa Williamson
Research report

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed into law on a dramatically accelerated schedule. That speed and the enormous scope of the TJCA and its individual elements suggests that alternatives may have been overlooked. The consequences of a proposed change in tax law are usually estimated with a...

March 26, 2019
Robert McClellandDaniel BergerAlyssa HarrisChenxi LuKyle Ueyama
Research report

State government tax revenues have fluctuated wildly over the past year largely because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late December 2017. Overall, year-over-year growth in state tax revenues was strong in the third quarter of 2018 but weaker than the growth observed in the final quarter...

March 10, 2019
Lucy Dadayan
Research report

In this report, we use a panel of anonymized data derived from income tax returns filed between 1999 and 2010 and Social Security benefits data to study how the labor force participation of retirement-age couples responds to taxation. We examine the responses of primary and secondary earners of...

February 21, 2019
Robert McClellandJohn IselinKevin PiercePhilip Stallworth
Research report

Recent tax credit proposals to help low- and middle-income families, such as Senator Kamala Harris’ LIFT the Middle Class Act, are being hotly debated. We examine the ability of these proposals, the current earned income tax credit (EITC), and the child tax credit (CTC) to achieve three goals:...

February 18, 2019
Isabel V. SawhillChristopher Pulliam
Research report

We provide estimates of the federal budget outlook based on new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis. CBO projects a debt-to-GDP ratio of 93 percent by fiscal year 2029 under current law, up from 78 percent today. Under a “current policy” scenario similar to CBO’s alternative fiscal...

February 12, 2019
Alan J. AuerbachWilliam G. GaleAaron Krupkin
Research report

In this report, we explore how and why local governments have turned to cooperation to boost economic development. We synthesize highlights from the literature, explore program features from two regional case studies, and share findings from interviews with local practitioners. Although research...

December 20, 2018
Megan RandallKim S. RuebenBrett TheodosAravind Boddupalli
Research report

Total state tax revenue from all sources showed strong growth in the last three quarters of 2018. States collected slightly over $1 trillion in tax revenues in fiscal year 2018, a gain of 7.8 percent over 2017. But the revenue growth was uneven among the states and across revenue sources. Much...

December 18, 2018
Lucy Dadayan
Research report

A robust carbon tax would generate considerable revenue. Some carbon tax advocates have suggested returning those revenues to Americans through direct payments, often called carbon dividends. We examine how to design these dividends considering two, sometimes conflicting, principles. Carbon...

December 11, 2018
Donald MarronElaine Maag