Excise taxes are narrowly based taxes on consumption, levied on specific goods, services, and activities. They can be either a per unit tax (such as...
Introduction The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides substantial support for working families with low and moderate incomes, including those who may participate in traditional safety net programs, such as TANF. Based on incomes in 2019, the Tax Policy Center estimates that more than 27 million
As the potential economic impact of a global pandemic starts to crystalize, there has rightly been a lot of discussion about how individuals and businesses will fare—and what governments can do to support them. But what will happen to government finances? In particular, what happens to U.S. state
We link below to distribution tables for the tax reform proposal put forward by the Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force on November 17, 2010. We provide estimates for the plan as it would look in 2022, 10 years after its proposed enactment, evaluated at 2018 income levels. We conduct
The US—with a projected 2018 federal budget deficit of 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product and an economy running at close to full employment-- just...
America ’s long-term fiscal challenge will drive the nation’s domestic policy for years to come. But in an age of partisan noise and name-calling, it...
Life expectancy at age 65 has grown by about six years since Social Security began paying benefits in 1940 and, despite some recent temporary declines, is expected to increase significantly further in future decades. Despite a modest increase in the age at which people can claim full Social
This study uses the Urban Institute’s Dynamic Simulation of Income Model to project the share of Social Security beneficiaries whose retirement incomes fall below 75 percent of preretirement income, a common benchmark for a secure retirement. Absent significant Social Security reforms, we project
Public benefit programs have the potential to help stabilize families when their income drops and can provide support as parents enter or reenter the workforce. As a family’s earnings rise, though, those earnings increases are often offset by declines in public assistance benefits (commonly called
An Experiment: How Low Could Tax Rates Go If Congress Eliminated All Tax Expenditures? How low could Congress cut tax rates without losing revenue? To...
This paper provides estimates of the total cost of non-business tax expenditures claimed on individual tax returns, taking account of interactions among provisions, and of their distributional effects among income groups. We estimate that non-business tax expenditures reduced tax liability by $1.17
2013 distribution table showing the effects of limiting benefit of tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers under current law by cash income percentile.
2013 distribution table showing the effects of limiting benefit of tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers under current policy by cash income percentile.
After worsening sharply during the Great Recession, the long-term fiscal outlook generally improved through 2015, due to a combination of legislative acts and lower projected growth of health care spending. The same factors and the slow but steady economic recovery helped reduce short-term deficits