General Explanations of the Administration's Revenue Proposals


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Designing a Tax Administration Reform Strategy


Book Description

Building on previous FAD work in the tax administration field, this paper defines broad criteria for diagnosing the problems in a country’s tax administration and formulating an appropriate reform strategy. To be effective, this strategy should be based on the size of the tax gap and the country’s particular circumstances. This paper discusses some guiding principles which have provided the basis for successful reforms, including: reducing the tax system’s complexity, encouraging taxpayers’ voluntary compliance, differentiating the treatment of taxpayers by their revenue potential, and ensuring the reform’s effective management. Also discussed are specific bottlenecks that hinder the effectiveness of the tax administration’s operations.




U.S. Investment Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017


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There is no consensus on how strongly the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has stimulated U.S. private fixed investment. Some argue that the business tax provisions spurred investment by cutting the cost of capital. Others see the TCJA primarily as a windfall for shareholders. We find that U.S. business investment since 2017 has grown strongly compared to pre-TCJA forecasts and that the overriding factor driving it has been the strength of expected aggregate demand. Investment has, so far, fallen short of predictions based on the postwar relation with tax cuts. Model simulations and firm-level data suggest that much of this weaker response reflects a lower sensitivity of investment to tax policy changes in the current environment of greater corporate market power. Economic policy uncertainty in 2018 played a relatively small role in dampening investment growth.







A Good Tax


Book Description

In A Good Tax, tax expert Joan Youngman skillfully considers how to improve the operation of the property tax and supply the information that is often missing in public debate. She analyzes the legal, administrative, and political challenges to the property tax in the United States and offers recommendations for its improvement. The book is accessibly written for policy analysts and public officials who are dealing with specific property tax issues and for those concerned with property tax issues in general.







Tax Simplification


Book Description

Why are tax systems so complex? What are the causes of tax law complexity? What are the consequences? Why is tax simplification so difficult to achieve? These, and related questions, lie at the core of this volume on tax simplification featuring chapters by leading tax experts around the world. The quest for simplicity è^' or at least some move towards simplification è^' has been a fixation of governments and others for many years, but little appears to have been achieved. Tax simplification is the most widely quoted but the least widely observed of the usually stated goals of policy (equity and efficiency being the others). It has been used (and abused) as a primary justification for tax reform over the last century, and typically it is seen as è^-a good thingè^-- è^' to say that one is in favour of tax simplification is tantamount to stating that one is in favour of good as opposed to evil.




Budget Options


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Their Fair Share


Book Description

Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR takes an engaging look at the evolution of today¿s tax code, as FDR found his reformist intentions tempered by lawmakers on the right and left: conservatives like Rep. Harold Knutson of Minnesota, warning the media about ''short-haired women and long-haired men of alien minds in the administrative branch ... trying to wreck the American way of life'' and firebrands like Huey ''Kingfish'' Long, who rejected Roosevelt¿s incremental approach to stump for a guaranteed minimum income and old-age pensions. Even more sober players like Treasury officials Henry J. Morgenthau Jr., Jacob Viner, and Herman Oliphant differed on whether to ''soak the rich'' through steep progressive levies or ''save the poor'' by extending the income tax to the middle class and forestalling federal consumption taxes. Then, as today, we have the president with a progressive reputation who proves more pragmatic than his ardent supporters had hoped. The legislators serve the media with apoplectic rhetoric. The magnates pay no income tax and defend this with the perfectly accurate argument that it is 100 percent legal. And the public is keenly invested in seeing everyone pay their fair share. Joseph J. Thorndike has mined rich insight from governmental and popular media archives to yield vital insights about our tax code and how Americans feel about it, then and now.