Tax News

Note: The following is Tax Foundation testimony submitted to the Nebraska Revenue Committee ahead of the hearing on LB754 on February 2, 2023. Chair Linehan and Members of the Revenue Committee: As you consider providing tax relief to Nebraska residents, I appreciate the opportunity to share how reducing top marginal individual and corporate income tax... View Article

Forty-three states adopted tax relief in 2021 or 2022—often in both years—and of those, 21 cut state income tax rates. It’s been a remarkable trend, driven by robust state revenues and an increasingly competitive tax environment. But many observers doubted the trend could, or should, continue into 2023. It can. It should. It will. Lawmakers... View Article

More than 170 countries worldwide—including all European countries—levy a Value-Added Tax (VAT) on goods and services. As today’s tax map shows, EU Member States’ VAT rates vary across countries, though they’re somewhat harmonized by the European Union (EU). The VAT is a consumption tax assessed on the value added in each production stage of a... View Article

The rate of inflation has slowed markedly in recent months, even declining slightly in December—but at year’s end, prices were still 14.6 percent higher than they were two years prior. That’s the fastest inflation rate over any two calendar years since the stagflation era of the late 1970s. State policymakers are understandably interested in bringing... View Article

New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data on individual income taxes for tax year 2020 shows the federal income tax system continues to be progressive as high-income taxpayers pay the highest average income tax rates. Average tax rates for all income groups remained lower in 2020, three years after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, than... View Article

The FairTax is a proposal to replace all major sources of the federal government’s revenue—the individual income tax, corporate income tax, estate and gift taxes, and payroll tax—with a national sales tax and rebate, abolishing the IRS in the process.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has her sights trained on tobacco. Earlier this month, she proposed increasing the New York cigarette tax rate by $1.00 a pack and extending New York’s existing flavored vaping ban to all other flavored tobacco products. If enacted, these policies would fuel black markets and create a fiscal hole for... View Article

Key Findings Forty-four states levy a corporate income tax. Rates range from 2.5 percent in North Carolina to 11.5 percent in New Jersey. Four states—Alaska, Illinois, Minnesota, and New Jersey—levy top marginal corporate income tax rates of 9 percent or higher. Eleven states—Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina,... View Article

Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released new revenue estimates for the global minimum tax and other significant changes to the international tax system. The headline number for Pillar Two’s global minimum tax: $220 billion. This is comparable to the total U.S. corporate tax receipts from 2019 and 2020 ($230 billion... View Article

Heading into the 2011 elections, only two of West Virginia’s 34 state senators were Republicans. Today, only three of them aren’t. The House of Delegates, which was comfortably Democratic until the 2014 elections, now has a Republican supermajority of 88 members to only 12 Democrats. It is the fourth-most-lopsided delegation in the country, after Wyoming... View Article

On the heels of adopting one of the most comprehensive state tax reform packages in years, Iowa lawmakers are back in Des Moines with property tax relief in their sights. But while the issue is worthy of their attention, House File 1 (HF 1) as currently drafted misses the mark. Property tax limitations come in... View Article

On 1 January 1993, the European Union launched the Single Market by abolishing border controls between EU Member States and ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital (otherwise known as the EU’s four freedoms). Thirty years later, the liberal economic principles that have driven the EU Single Market’s success are being questioned.... View Article

Georgia lawmakers brought a tax reform package across the finish line in 2022 that will change the state’s progressive income tax to a 5.49 percent flat tax beginning in 2024, with triggers to provide additional rate reductions. This is an important step forward, but if the state truly wants to cement its status as a... View Article

As Americans prepare to file their 2022 tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) remains mired in a backlog of millions of returns from previous tax filing seasons. The National Taxpayer Advocate issued a warning to lawmakers in her annual report to Congress that the backlog creates “challenges for the 2023 tax filing season before... View Article

Wealth taxes are back in a big way. In a coordinated effort, lawmakers in seven states that collectively house about 60 percent of the nation’s wealth—California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington—are introducing wealth tax legislation on Thursday. The campaign is part of a broader national focus on new taxes on investment, entrepreneurship,... View Article

Value-added taxes (VAT) make up approximately one-fifth of total tax revenues in European Union countries. However, countries differ significantly in how efficiently they raise VAT revenue. One way to measure a country’s VAT efficiency is the VAT Gap—the difference between revenue that should be collected under an ideal VAT system and the amount that gets collected.  The difference... View Article

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives approved their rules package for the 118th Congress. One notable change to the rules will require the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to produce estimates of the “budgetary effects of changes in economic output, employment, capital stock, and other macroeconomic variables” resulting from... View Article

There are many changes coming to Washington, D.C., now that Republicans have taken control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Uncertainty surrounds President Biden’s ability to pass his economic agenda through a divided Congress and few can predict the path U.S. tax policy will take at home or abroad. However, despite a bleak outlook for... View Article

Newly published data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicates in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic, American incomes continued to rise as part of a broad economic expansion. It also shows that, contrary to common perceptions, the federal tax system is progressive. The data on household incomes and tax burdens also comes two years... View Article

Key Findings The value-added tax (VAT) is a major source of revenue for EU countries and is one of the EU’s own resources. For Member States, it represents on average 17.8 percent of their total tax revenue. For the EU, VAT revenue represented roughly 7.5 percent of its total revenue in 2021. While the European... View Article

Americans were on the move in 2022 and chose low-tax states over high-tax ones. That’s the finding of recent U.S. Census Bureau population data and commercial datasets released this week by U-Haul and United Van Lines. The U.S. population grew 0.4 percent between July 2021 and July 2022, an increase from the previous year’s historically low rate of 0.1 percent. While... View Article

It’s Christmas time, and for millions of families around the country, that means revisiting some classic holiday movies. For some, that includes It’s a Wonderful Life and Home Alone. For others, that includes Die Hard. In this analyst’s view, Die Hard is a Christmas movie, though this is not an institutional position of Tax Foundation.... View Article

Most state tax changes take effect at the beginning of the calendar year (January 1) or at the beginning of the fiscal year (July 1 for most states). On January 1, 2023, thirty-eight states have noteworthy tax changes taking effect. Most of these changes represent net tax reductions, the result of an unprecedented wave of... View Article

This week, Congress forged an agreement to fund the federal government through an omnibus spending package that runs through September 2023. This package will include legislation that improves the tax treatment of saving, building on previous proposals introduced in the Senate and the House that change incentives to save and simplify the tax treatment of... View Article

Since 2018, the tax world has seen multiple rounds of proposals to change how digital companies are taxed. The most common, the Digital Services Tax (DST), popped up as a European Commission directive and then made its way into the national laws of multiple countries across the globe. Ongoing international tax negotiations were partially motivated... View Article

Key Findings Cost recovery refers to how businesses deduct their investments over time. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reintroduced 100 percent bonus depreciation for short-lived investments, such as machinery and equipment, allowing full cost recovery for qualifying investments. Bonus depreciation will begin phasing down at the beginning of 2023. In 2018, the... View Article

Last week, the European Union approved the world’s first Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Well, in name anyway. The mechanism is a key aspect of the EU’s broader Fit for 55 package which aims to cut 55 percent of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU by 2030. It’s also a foundational aspect of... View Article

The tax treatment of charitable giving over the past few years has been influenced by two major tax events: the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. These changes provide a case study of how changes in tax policy can influence taxpayer behavior in... View Article

Key Findings A typical American household with four phones on a “family share” plan, paying $100 per month for taxable wireless service, would pay nearly $305 per year in taxes, fees, and government surcharges—up slightly from $300 in 2021. Nationally, taxes, fees, and government surcharges make up a record-high 25.4 percent tax on taxable voice... View Article

Underlying every fiscal policy discussion in Washington is the question of progressivity: how much should tax and spending policy redistribute from high-income households to low-income households? This debate is often more rhetorical than substantive, but a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) fills this void by presenting data showing that the current fiscal... View Article

In recent years, countries have debated significant changes to international tax rules affecting multinational companies. Last October, after negotiations at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), more than 130 member jurisdictions agreed to an outline for new tax rules. Large companies would pay more taxes in countries where they have customers and less in countries... View Article

Research and development (R&D) is a crucial part of technological change, as R&D takes initial scientific discoveries and translates them into useful products that improve lives. Both the public and private sectors play important roles in R&D, but in recent years, private sector investment has become increasingly important. In 2019, businesses performed 75 percent of... View Article

Note: All data and methodological notes are accessible in our GitHub repository. Key Findings In 2022, 16 countries made changes to their statutory corporate income tax rates. Six countries—Colombia, South Sudan, Netherlands, Turkey, Chile, and Montenegro—increased their top corporate tax rates, while 10 countries—including France, Greece, and Monaco—reduced their corporate tax rates. Comoros (50 percent), Puerto Rico... View Article

Key Findings Central administration of local taxes is a common feature of sales taxes but is less common for income, tourism, and other local taxes. Absent centralized administration, localities increase their administrative costs, impose substantial additional compliance costs on businesses, and reduce overall levels of compliance. A patchwork approach to local tax administration is particularly... View Article

The Tax Foundation recently released the 2022 International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI), measuring the complexity and neutrality of countries’ tax systems. Over the years, Chile has consistently remained in the lower half of the Index’s rankings, and in the 2022 version of the Index, Chile fell from 26th to 27th (out of 38 countries) due... View Article

The tax treatment of research and development (R&D) expenses is one of the biggest issues facing Congress as the year winds down. Since the beginning of 2022, companies have had to spread deductions for R&D costs out over five years, instead of deducting them immediately. This policy, known as R&D amortization, reduces economic growth by... View Article

Key Findings: Excessive tax rates on cigarettes induce substantial black and gray market movement of tobacco products into high-tax states from low-tax states or foreign sources. New York has the highest inbound smuggling activity, with an estimated 53.5 percent of cigarettes consumed in the state deriving from smuggled sources in 2020. New York is followed... View Article

Later this week, the European Union is expected to release a new Tobacco Tax Directive, the first update in more than a decade. Early reports indicate that the EU will propose a significant increase to the existing minimum cigarette tax rates levied across the Union and expand the product categories that are taxed, including a... View Article

As part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the United States enacted a new limitation on interest deductions for businesses. While it is common for countries across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to set limits for interest deductions, starting this year, the U.S. became an outlier by using earnings... View Article

In two months, the United Kingdom has had two new tax plans, two new Prime Ministers (Liz Truss, then Rishi Sunak), and two new Finance Ministers (Kwasi Kwarteng, then Jeremy Hunt). The Truss-Kwarteng tax proposal would have lent modest support to real economic growth, cushioning economic fallout from the Bank of England’s overdue efforts to... View Article

French President Macron is coming to Washington, D.C., this week to ask President Biden the question on the minds of European leaders: “Why did you do this to us?” When President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, he put many European companies at a disadvantage unless they move production to the United States... View Article

Consumers experience the pernicious effects of inflation every time they shop. And, in a vicious cycle, a forthcoming change in the federal tax code means that inflation will drive up the cost of the very business investments that can boost supply and start bending the cost curve down. Through inaction, states will follow suit—but they... View Article

“Tax fairness” has been a lingering theme in European Union policy circles since the 2008 financial crisis. Over time, the meaning of “tax fairness” has expanded from combatting tax fraud and avoidance to promoting a certain vision of broader economic fairness. This vision has been primarily focused on taking from wealthy citizens and large corporations and giving... View Article

Two weeks after the 2022 midterm elections, it’s becoming clearer where tax policy may be headed for the rest of the year and into 2023. In the short term, Congress must deal with tax extenders and expiring business tax provisions that may undermine the economy. Next year, the return of divided government and an increasingly... View Article

Our 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index, released in October, considers five main tax categories: corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales and excise taxes, property and wealth taxes, and unemployment insurance taxes. Today, we take a closer look at states’ rankings on the corporate tax component, which accounts for 21.1 percent of each state’s overall rank. The corporate tax... View Article

On Election Day, a narrow majority of voters approved Massachusetts Question 1, also known as the Fair Share Amendment, which will transition the Commonwealth from a flat rate individual income tax to a graduated rate system. Effective January 1, 2023, the Bay State will begin taxing all individual income above $1 million at a 9 percent... View Article

Before the pandemic, an estimated 5.8 million Americans worked outside their state of residence, while about 8.9 million people worked from home. By 2021, over 27.6 million Americans were working almost exclusively from home, while the number of workers commuting across state lines dipped to 4.5 million. Though the pandemic’s short-run effect was to reduce... View Article

At the end of each year, policymakers face a series of expiring tax provisions that are typically extended on a temporary basis, setting up a recurring and almost ritualistic tax extenders season. At a time of heightened concerns about the economy, high deficits, and inflation, policymakers should prioritize stability and economic growth by making permanent... View Article

As we near this year’s “lame duck” session of Congress, there has been renewed interest in child tax credit reform as part of a broader tax deal. One year after the expanded child tax credit originally enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan expired, policymakers are no closer to a consensus on where the child... View Article

Over the last six months, European perceptions of the Inflation Reduction Act have been a rollercoaster. European policymakers were hopeful that the Inflation Reduction Act would implement Janet Yellen’s Pillar Two commitment at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But hope turned to disappointment when the final text was fundamentally different from Pillar Two.... View Article