This chartbook compares the breadth of general sales and excise tax bases across the states. It categorizes detailed personal consumption expenditures (as measured in the Bureau of Economic Analysis National Income and Products Accounts) by their tax treatment in each state and the District of...
In this report, we compare revenue equivalent alternatives to the $10,000 annual limit on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction enacted in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). We consider options that would limit all itemized deductions, not just the SALT deduction, and an additional option...
In this report, we evaluate major federal tax expenditures. We distinguish between tax expenditures that are effectively spending programs and those that are departures from a comprehensive income tax but are not essentially spending substitutes. Most major tax expenditures have some policy...
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced tax expenditures but by much less than the Tax Reform Act of 1986, relative to the size of the economy. In this report, we review the major changes from the new law to individual (nonbusiness) and business tax expenditures. The former category includes tax...
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...
In this brief, we consider both personal and business income tax expenditures at the state level. We use California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia as examples. We separate tax expenditures into those that occur because of conformity with federal tax provisions and those...
In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed into law PL 115-97, commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which substantially changed federal individual and corporate income taxes. Many of the income tax changes in the TCJA will affect state income taxes through existing links...
In this brief, we list the 10 major business tax expenditures with the largest revenue losses, as defined by the Office of Tax Analysis (OTA) of the US Treasury Department and the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). We provide a brief description of each provision and briefly...
In this brief we consider the largest nonbusiness tax expenditures in the individual income tax. We provide a description of these provisions, estimates of their cost and the distribution of their tax benefits across income groups, and briefly summarize their effects. We consider tax...
To follow significant fiscal changes, such as those being driven by the legislative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, it helps to have a background in...
Looking for a quick reference that explains how the tax code treats families with children? Or how it taxes multinational corporations? Maybe you want to...
While other states are considering workarounds to the Tax Cut and Jobs Act’s (TCJA) $10,000 annual limit on the federal deduction for state and local...
The Congressional Budget Office released its Analysis of the President’s FY2018 Budget last week, estimating that the plan would reduce the federal budget deficit from...
The House Republican leadership and the Trump Administration want to repeal the state and local tax (SALT) deduction and the individual Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)...
Small business owners are more concerned with the complexity of state and local tax laws than with the amount of tax they pay, according to a recent...