If Congress is going to reform the tax code, it will take an enormous amount of hard work and a lot of luck. The stars, as they say, will have to align. Unfortunately, those galactic bodies seem to be getting more and more disarranged. Reform just can’t catch a break. The deficit is shrinking, taking away [...]

Tax preferences for housing are under fire, with mounting evidence that these preferences are inefficient, unequal, and too expensive to warrant a place in the tax code. Critics of proposed changes in the tax treatment of home ownership argue that these reforms would slash home prices at the very time they are showing signs of [...]

The Congressional Budget Office report on the distribution of tax expenditures is getting lots of buzz, nearly all of it positive. This is a gratifying and somewhat surprising outcome. The paper confirms many of the findings of my Tax Policy Center colleagues who have done similar analyses in recent years. The basic story is pretty [...]

Two interesting new papers from the Congressional Research Service highlight a major challenge faced by any tax reform that reduces itemized deductions to help pay for lower tax rates—lots of middle-income people would lose at least some benefits from scaling back those deductions. It isn’t a new lesson, but it is one that bears repeating. For instance, [...]

If you are a tax geek, or even a normal person who wants to keep up with the ongoing debate over restructuring the tax code, download a copy of the congressional Joint Tax Committee’s Tax Reform Working Group Report. It is 568 pages long, doesn’t have much of a plot, has no character development (unless you [...]

There may be no more vexing challenge in the Revenue Code than the taxation of foreign transactions of multinational companies. Most everyone agrees that the current system is a mess. And corporate tax reform is impossible without addressing international issues. Yet, this corner of the tax law is not only immensely complex but most proposed [...]

Last week, at the request of the House Ways and Means Committee, I testified on how Congress could reform the mortgage interest deduction, a popular tax expenditure provision with a big sticker price. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the mortgage interest deduction will cost $380 billion over the next five years, making it [...]

It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that the just-announced retirement of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) boosts chances for tax reform in the short term. I’m not so sure. The upbeat argument goes like this: By announcing that he will not run for reelection in 2014, Baucus is free from the pressures of [...]

Just months ago, to the joy of conservatives and the consternation of liberals, several Republican governors proposed major tax reform plans. At least three–Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Dave Heineman of Nebraska, and Pat McCrory of North Carolina– vowed to completely repeal their state corporate and individual income taxes. But by Tax Day, two of those [...]

Small businesses occupy an iconic place in the public policy debate and benefit from a broad range of tax and spending subsidies. But the economic issues surrounding small businesses and innovation are complex and nuanced, and not well understood.  We are learning, however, that  if Congress wants to encourage risk-taking, it may be better off [...]