Tax News

Italy’s legislative elections on 25 September resulted in the country’s first right-wing government since 2011. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, will likely become Prime Minister and govern in a coalition with the League (led by Matteo Salvini) and Forza Italia (led by Silvio Berlusconi). On national tax policy, the coalition has been... View Article

Corporations in the United States pay federal corporate income taxes levied at a 21 percent rate. Forty-four states and D.C. also levy taxes on corporate income, with top marginal rates ranging from 2.5 percent in North Carolina to 11.5 percent in New Jersey. Fifteen of the states levy graduated corporate income tax rates, while the... View Article

As noted in a Tax Foundation blog post last week, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) primarily uses carrots, not sticks, to incentivize reductions in carbon emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act creates or expands tax credits for various low- or no-emission technologies, rather than imposing a generalized penalty for emissions, such as a carbon tax. However, there... View Article

Picture this: you arrive at your polling place this November and start filling in your ballot. Member of Congress? Check. State legislators? You did your homework! Mayor? Good to go. Whether certain property tax exemptions provided for agricultural equipment and certain farm products should be expanded to include a merger of two or more family-owned... View Article

Note: This report was published in partnership with the Centre for Policy Studies, one of the oldest and most influential think tanks in Westminster. With a focus on taxation, economic growth, business, welfare, housing and green growth, its goal is to develop policies that widen enterprise, ownership and opportunity. Key Findings For many years, the UK has adopted a... View Article

Key Findings The Section 232 tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum raised the cost of production for manufacturers, reducing employment in those industries, raising prices for consumers, and hurting exports. The jobs “saved” in the steel-producing industries from the tariffs came at a high cost to consumers, at roughly $650,000 per job saved according... View Article

Loss carryover tax provisions allow businesses to either deduct current year losses against future profits (carryforwards) or current year losses against past profits (carrybacks). Many companies have investment projects with different risk profiles and operate in industries that fluctuate greatly with the business cycle. Carryover tax provisions help businesses “smooth” their risk and income, making... View Article

The latest inflation report confirms that prices for just about everything continue to rise, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) up 8.3 percent over the last year and many categories up even higher, including food (11.4 percent) and energy (23.8 percent). While not part of the CPI, another measure of inflation (call it the Taxpayer... View Article

Ernest S. Christian, Jr., (1937-2022) was one of the tax policy community’s most distinguished and influential experts, showing us how effective sound tax policy can be. He passed away on September 13th, leaving behind a legacy of tax reform. Ernie gave up a lucrative career in law and government to devote the last nearly three... View Article

The Inflation Reduction Act created numerous tax subsidy programs intended to accelerate the transition to a greener economy. The justification for climate change action is strong, but there are two possible approaches to take which we might colloquially call carrots and sticks. Carrots are subsidies designed to reduce emissions—think tax credits for green energy or carbon... View Article

Property taxes are the primary tool for financing local government and generating state-level revenue in some states as well. In fiscal year 2020, property taxes comprised 32.2 percent of total state and local tax collections in the United States, more than any other source of tax revenue. Local governments rely heavily on property taxes to fund schools, roads, police departments, fire and emergency medical... View Article

Key Findings Massachusetts’ tax advantage in New England is primarily driven by its competitive individual income tax rate and its sales and use tax structure. The graduated income tax amendment would be paid by many small businesses, in addition to wealthy individuals. The proposed surtax is likely to have negative economic effects that will impact... View Article

With record inflation now squeezing American household budgets, you can thank our Senior Fellow Emeritus Steve Entin for shielding U.S. workers from being pushed into higher tax brackets. If ever there was a paycheck protection program, defending people from bracket creep may be the most important one ever designed. It all started some 40 years... 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... View Article

The UK contest for Boris Johnson’s replacement has concluded: Liz Truss is now the new UK Prime Minister. Her campaign offers clues about what this might mean for UK tax policy, though it is unclear how soon the various plans will be enacted. Like many other countries, the UK is dealing with challenges caused by... View Article

Most countries’ personal income taxes have a progressive structure where tax rates increase as individuals earn higher wages. However, if wages are pushed up by inflation, people may pay higher taxes even if their real earnings have not increased. This is known as bracket creep. In the first quarter of 2022, labor costs in the... View Article

Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) has called a special session for September 1, 2022, to consider another round of tax reform and relief legislation that would return surplus revenue to taxpayers while making the state’s tax code more economically competitive. House Bill 1 would move Idaho to a flat income tax structure, reduce the rate from... View Article

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of testifying before members of the New Mexico legislature regarding policies that could generate greater economic growth and promote more stable revenue streams for the state. That afternoon, I heard a particular comment raised more than once: there are many factors that influence why a business might... View Article

Gov. Mike Parson (R) has called the Missouri legislature into a special session beginning September 6th, with the goal of reducing the individual income tax from 5.4 percent to 4.8 percent and raising the standard deduction. An income tax reduction is a competitive move, especially in a rapidly changing tax landscape, but the legislature should... View Article

As cookout attendees around the country crack open a cold one on Labor Day weekend, take a minute to discover how much of your cash is actually going toward the cost of a brew. The United States collects an excise tax on beer at the federal level (ranging from $0.11 to $0.58 per gallon based on production,... View Article

Key Findings 100 percent bonus depreciation allows firms an immediate tax deduction for investments in qualifying short-lived assets. The phaseout of 100 percent bonus depreciation, scheduled to take place after the end of 2022, will increase the after-tax cost of investment in the United States. Preventing the phaseout and making 100 percent bonus depreciation a... View Article

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was one of the biggest winners in the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The new law approved roughly $80 billion in additional IRS funding over the next 10 years. This will boost the IRS budget from around $12 billion per year to roughly $20 billion, a 66 percent increase.... View Article

President Biden’s announcement of student loan debt forgiveness is already raising many questions. How much will it cost? Who will benefit the most? How will it contribute to inflation? Does the president even have the legal authority to implement this loan forgiveness? Here’s one more question to add to the mix: will states consider student... View Article

Key Findings Property taxes are the primary source of tax collections at the local level, responsible for 72.2 percent of local tax revenue in fiscal year 2020 (the most recent year for which data are available). Once a significant driver of state budgets as well, their share of state collections has dropped to a mere... View Article

Student loan debt forgiveness has been at the forefront of recent federal policy discussions, with President Biden announcing a plan to use executive action to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for most borrowers and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Under current law, the tax code handles debt forgiveness differently depending on the borrower’s... View Article

In a pattern that has become all too common in recent decades, the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) added yet another layer of tax complexity to an already complex and burdensome federal tax code. While the Inflation Reduction Act increased the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget by roughly $80 billion over 10 years, it... View Article

In response to high oil prices, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has proposed raising taxes on oil and gas companies in three ways. His “Taxing Big Oil Profiteers Act” would create an additional 21 percent tax on so-called excess profits earned over 10 percent of revenues of oil companies with annual revenues over $1 billion; levy... View Article

With passage of SB1 in the General Assembly’s third special session, Arkansas last week became the 13th state to authorize an individual income tax rate reduction this year. This round of Arkansas income tax cuts effectively accelerated reforms policymakers enacted eight months ago. The December 2021 changes set the state on course to lower its... View Article

Tax Foundation has engaged constructively in the OECD Pillar One and Pillar Two process since it was launched in 2019. The consultation on the Progress Report on Pillar One provides another opportunity for that. However, at this point it is challenging to be constructive when the policy seems designed to fail. The Progress Report reveals... View Article

Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). There is a compelling case for strengthening the enforcement of existing taxes, rather than creating new ones, as a way to raise revenue. The economic costs of enforcing existing taxes are likely lower than... View Article

The FDA’s proposal to ban flavored cigars would be a disruptive force in the cigar market and would carry significant revenue implications for many state governments. Flavored cigars make up between one-third and one-half of all cigar sales. We estimate that the aggregate effect of a ban on flavored cigar sales in the U.S. would... View Article

Imagine that a government provides subsidies to single parents that actually increase tax rates on additional work. This is the case for a Japanese single parent who earns a rough equivalent of US $39,981 and faces a 57 percent marginal tax rate. With just a small increase in pay of $599, she would face a... View Article

Today’s map zeroes in on states that have a “marriage penalty” in their individual income tax brackets. Under a graduated-rate income tax system, a taxpayer’s marginal income is subject to progressively higher tax rates. A marriage penalty or “marriage tax penalty” exists when a state’s income brackets for married taxpayers filing jointly are less than double the... View Article

The Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) calls for a new 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks, the argument being it would be better for the economy if firms invested their surplus cash in the business, rather than returning this value to shareholders. However, research suggests that buybacks do not hinder investment opportunities, and actually... View Article

Over the last few years, concerns have been raised that the existing international tax system does not properly capture the digitalization of the economy. Under current international tax rules, multinationals generally pay corporate income tax where production occurs rather than where consumers or, specifically for the digital sector, users are located. However, some argue that... View Article

As the U.S. Senate races to consider the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a centerpiece of the proposed tax increases is the 15 percent minimum book tax on corporate income for firms earning over $1 billion, making up about 60 percent of the net revenue in the IRA. The minimum book tax puts one of the... View Article

In the rush to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which features an ill-conceived tax on the book income of U.S. corporations, it is worth reminding policymakers of a well-established finding in the economic literature: that among all the major ways to raise revenue, increasing the corporate tax is the most economically destructive due to its... View Article

The current version of the proposed reconciliation bill—the Inflation Reduction Act—attempts to raise hundreds of billions of dollars from corporations without raising the corporate tax rate through a 15 percent book minimum tax, a new alternative minimum tax applied to the financial statement income (i.e., book income) that companies report to their investors. Economists have focused on some of the problems... View Article

Imagine that a government provides subsidies to single parents that actually increase tax rates on additional work. This is the case for an Australian single parent who earns less than the average wage. With an increase in pay of just AUD 983 more, he would face a 652 percent marginal tax rate. Therefore, despite the... View Article

Preliminary Revenue and Economic Estimates Net Revenue $304B Long-run GDP -0.1% Wages -0.1% FTE Jobs -30,000 Source: Tax Foundation General Equilibrium Model, July 2022. Last-week’s Democrat-sponsored Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), successor to the House-passed Build Back Better Act of late 2021, has been touted by President Biden to, among other things, help reduce the country’s... View Article

Over the course of the last year, it has become clear that Democratic lawmakers want to change U.S. tax rules for large companies. However, as proposals have been debated in recent months, there are have been clear divides between U.S. proposals and the global minimum tax rules. Before getting too far into the weeds, it... View Article

Key Findings Seventeen states will hold a sales tax holiday in 2022, down from a peak of 19 in 2010 and unchanged from last year. Sales tax holidays do not promote economic growth or significantly increase consumer purchases; the evidence (including a 2017 study by Federal Reserve researchers) shows that they simply shift the timing... View Article

As the reality of a second quarter of negative economic growth settles in Washington, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its own sobering report on the government’s long-term finances. The CBO long-term budget outlook report shows widening deficits over the next three decades as both federal spending and tax revenues are expected to rise above... View Article

With the Indiana General Assembly gaveled in this week for a special session called by Gov. Eric Holcomb (R), one of the issues is how to allocate portions of the $6.1 billion budget surplus for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The House, Senate, and governor agree that some of the extra revenue should... View Article

Imagine a worker who gets a raise and ends up paying in tax more than 50 percent of that raise. This is the case for a Canadian worker who earns CAD 48,124. With an increase in pay of CAD 822, he would face a 59 percent marginal tax rate. This Canadian worker will end up... View Article

Efforts to raise taxes on corporations and high-income earners recently hit a brick wall when U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) once again expressed concerns about inflation and a potential recession. That would seem to be the end of the story, as there is no reason to think inflation will be going away anytime soon and... View Article

When thinking about tax policy, economists typically distinguish between the short run and long run. While there might be temporary boosts to the economy in the short term from a tax cut due to increased incomes, changes in tax policy alter the incentives to work, save, and invest, which can produce benefits to economic growth... View Article

’Tis the season to crack open a cold one. Ahead of International Beer Day on August 5th, let’s take a minute to discover how much of your cash is actually going toward the cost of a brew with this week’s tax map, which explores excise duties on beer. EU law requires every EU country to... View Article

With inflation continuing to skyrocket, especially for food, which reached 10.4 percent in June, it is worth examining how the ongoing U.S. trade war with China and U.S. tariff policy overall has impacted U.S. agriculture and food prices. The economic literature shows that the U.S. import tariffs and subsequent retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and... View Article

The global tax deal that was struck last year continues to move along in slow and uncertain ways. While the global minimum tax gets much attention in the media (and in my own writings, to be honest), there is another significant piece to the deal. The global minimum tax (also known as OECD Pillar Two) would... View Article