Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow in the Tax Policy Center, testified before the Select Revenue Measures and Oversight subcommittees of House Ways and Means at a hearing on the tax gap and improving tax administration. The testimony focused on four key areas: the impact of reductions in the IRS’s...
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided most US households with one-time economic impact payments to mitigate the negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Internal Revenue Service was responsible for distributing the payments, which were rapidly...
From 2010 through 2019, funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) dropped by 24 percent, after adjustment for inflation. As a consequence, the percentage of taxpayers who were audited fell by nearly half. In this paper, we use confidential IRS data to compare the returns on investments (ROI...
On September 24, 2019, Janet Holtzblatt presented at TPC's event, "Taxing Wealth." This slide deck provides an overview of the concept of a wealth tax and presents three design options to create one. View a live recording of Holtzblatt's presentation here.
The Internal Revenue Code generally does not refer to race or ethnicity, but federal income taxes may contribute to racial disparities when factors that affect...
What policymakers give, policymakers can take away. Nine months after Congress enacted President Biden’s proposal to boost the Internal Revenue Service’s 10-year budget by $80...
The veil has lifted (at least partway) on the administration’s two-year-old pledge that the IRS would not use its $80 billion budget boost to increase...
Most years, the Tax Policy Center celebrates Valentine Day with a whimsical analysis of the costs and benefits—tax-wise—of marriage. What’s new this year is that...
How will we know whether the Inflation Reduction Act’s $80 billion ten-year investment in the Internal Revenue Service is successful? Unfortunately, measuring performance isn’t easy,...
Understanding how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will affect the Internal Revenue Service’s operations requires wading through a swamp of misinformation, disinformation, and no information...
With the near-certain enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Internal Revenue Service is on track for an $80 billion boost to its ten-year budget...
When it comes to tax enforcement, I used to believe the Internal Revenue Service could never have too much information. But the agency already collects...
The Internal Revenue Service has limped through yet another tax filing season, reduced to plugging staffing holes in customer service and returns processing by shifting...
The “tax gap”—the difference between taxes owed to the government and taxes actually collected—often is equated with evasion . But the tax gap is more...
Congress is moving toward rectifying the decade-long funding crisis at the IRS . The House is on track to adopt President Biden’s proposed $1.6 billion...
By including in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) a provision to exempt up to $10,200 of last year’s unemployment benefits from federal income tax, Congress...
A few years ago, Ta-Nehesi Coates wrote a powerful essay, “The Case for Reparations” for The Atlantic . Reparations, he affirmed, would help close the...
Was it really last May that the House of Representatives passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which would have authorized...
