Health costs now total close to one-fifth of households' personal income. For moderate-income workers whose cash wages are lower then they would be if employers weren't paying for their health insurance, the bite is often bigger. Many elected officials seeking health care reform don't even know

The CBO's new budget update provides the opportunity to reassess fiscal prospects and reconsider policy options. This paper examines the baseline CBO projections and adjusts the official data in ways that we believe more accurately reflect the current trajectory of tax and spending policies and the

A person's marginal tax rate, the tax rate on their last dollar of income, may influence their decision to work and save. As marginal tax rates increase, the after-tax reward from working an additional hour or saving more decreases. Although the actual effect on economic decisions is uncertain,

The effects of income tax changes on the economy and the distribution of after-tax income depend in part on the population that does not file a tax return or that does file a return but owes little or no net income tax liability. These types of tax units featured prominently in the debate over the

Before enactment of the Tax Reform Act on 1986, the individual tax code included 25 marginal tax rates. No more than 10 percent of tax filers were in a single bracket and eight brackets included less than 1 percentage of filers. Read this article to learn more about the history of Income Tax

On June 13, 2003, the IRS requested public comments on a proposed EITC procedure. The goal of this new EITC procedure, known as precertification, is to reduce EITC error rates by individuals who are ineligible. Because a variety of questions have been raised about this procedure, and also because

In recent years, the largest budgetary decisions of Congress have been concentrated in two areas: tax cuts and expansions in health care, particularly Medicare. Given all the rhetoric that surfaced during the tax cut debate, it might be worthwhile to see how consistently these arguments have been