Taxes feature prominently in the Biden administration’s fiscal year 2025 budget. They will continue to be a point of contention in the presidential election, with many parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) soon set to expire. At the same time, states and localities are confronting their own tax and budget choices after three years of state tax cuts and amid broader post-COVID shifts as federal relief comes to an end.
Thankfully, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC)’s updated Briefing Book can help you understand the lay of the land on current tax and budget issues and keep up with fast-moving proposals and reforms.
The Briefing Book is one of TPC’s most popular products — read and relied on by millions of students, journalists, staffers, and anyone else who wants to learn more about taxes and budgets. With nearly 240 online pages, this year’s update contains a wealth of information on how taxes figure into major economic and social policy debates over the safety net, health care, housing, climate change, education, immigration, and more.
For example, our pages answer questions including:
- What is the child tax credit?
- How does the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes work?
- What is the TCJA repatriation tax and how does it work?
- How many people pay the estate tax?
- How do state and local cannabis (marijuana) taxes work?
Our newly updated Briefing Book can help you navigate recent tax policy and administration changes (e.g., increase in the IRS budget) and what we know about their impacts so far using a mix of facts, analysis, and insights. We also discuss the pros and cons of potential revenue sources, such as value-added taxes and carbon taxes, plus how they may impact tax administration and the nation’s fiscal outlook.
With this update, we have added nearly 30 new entries, including:
- How do the impacts of tax policies vary by race and ethnicity?
- What did the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act do?
- What is the Fair Tax?
- What are the OECD Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 for reforming international taxation?
- How do state child tax credits work?
In the coming months, we will update the Briefing Book to account for the tax reforms outlined in President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget as well as recently released wealth data, such as from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Are there other tax and budget policies and practices we should cover? Please let us know what you think and continue to check our website and TaxVox for more Briefing Book updates.
