Immigration policy poses an unusual challenge for the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. If Congress allows more people into the United States, our population, labor force, and economy will all get bigger. But CBO and JCT usually hold employment, gross domestic product (GDP), and other macroeconomic variables constant when making their [...]

If income tax deductions are capped or limited—an idea that often comes up in the debate over both the fiscal cliff and long-run tax reform—the biggest losers could well be charities. At a time when the government role in providing a safety net may shrink, many of these groups may become increasingly important.  Yet deduction [...]

I’m preparing a presentation on our tax system for a group of visiting foreign tax officials and they wanted to know how responsibilities are divided within the federal government.  Seems like a fair question. In other countries, the process is often quite streamlined:  a Ministry of Finance, which makes the political decisions, a Treasury Department, [...]