The “tax gap”—the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount of tax actually paid—includes substantial gray areas where the law is ambiguous and the IRS’s determination of taxes owed is debatable. Understanding the tax gap’s shades of gray can inform discussions of tax law and
The federal government's Social Security spending totaled $1 trillion in 2020, or 5% of GDP. Sixty years ago, Social Security spending was about 2.3% of GDP.
This report presents updated figures in 2021 dollars for the lifetime benefits earned and the lifetime taxes paid by hypothetical workers participating in Social Security and Medicare. For a single male earning average wages every year and retiring in 2020 at age 65, lifetime Social Security and
As Congress struggles to develop a scaled back version of President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) plan, some observers (including my TPC colleague Howard Gleckman...
