Greg Leiserson (2017-11-09): The Tax Foundation’s score of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: "First, the Tax Foundation appears to incorrectly model the interaction between federal and state corporate income taxes, thus overstating the effect of statutory rate cuts. Second, the Tax Foundation appears to treat the estate tax as a nondeductible annual property tax paid by businesses, which results in inflated estimates of the effect of repealing the tax. Appropriately addressing the issues raised in this note could reduce the Tax Foundation’s estimate of the increase in GDP that would result from the legislation to 1.9 percent—a reduction of roughly half—even if there are no other issues with the Tax Foundation’s estimates...."

Equitable Growth (2017-11-10): Statement on status of Tax Foundation response to Equitable Growth critique: "The Tax Foundation has since acknowledged that the interaction between federal and state corporate income taxes in its model is incorrect and stated that the flaw will be addressed. Accordingly, the organization reduced its projected growth figure for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We appreciate the Tax Foundation’s prompt attention to this issue. Leiserson has provided additional technical assistance to help with the changes to the model necessary to correct the problem..."

Greg Leiserson (2017-10-19): The ‘Unified Framework’ is a proposal for two new wasteful tax expenditures: "Judged against this true comprehensive income tax hypothetical, a sharply lower tax rate on corporate income would be appropriately viewed as a tax expenditure because the lower corporate rate would provide a preferential rate of tax for income earned by corporations compared to other sources of income such as wages..."

Greg Leiserson (2017-09-21): U.S. tax cuts for the rich won’t deliver gains for everyone: "In the special case of revenue-neutral reform—an ostensible target for current reform efforts in Congress—distribution tables capture the primary gains from increases in economic efficiency in their estimates of changes in after-tax income..."

Greg Leiserson (2017-09-21): Issue brief: If U.S. tax reform delivers equitable growth, a distribution table will show it: "Focusing on changes in economic output... ignores the potential for tax reform to have different impacts for people up and down the income ladder... overstates the economic gains from reform.... The greater risk in the coming months is not that distribution tables will understate the gains from tax reform, but rather that distribution tables will overstate the gains of reform and understate its regressivity if policymakers turn to tax cuts rather than tax reform and include a slate of temporary policies such as a one-time tax on overseas profits..."

Greg Leiserson (2017-08-17): In defense of the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate: "Fixation on the corporate tax rate is unfortunate and misguided. Business tax reform should be primarily about the tax base, not the tax rate. Treating the statutory rate as the key element of reform will inevitably result in a more expensive, more regressive, and less economically beneficial (if not actively harmful) reform than one that focuses on the tax base..."

Greg Leiserson (2017-06-15): It’s no surprise that the Kansas tax cut experiment failed to create jobs: "Claims of supply-side growth from tax cuts on business profits rely on the idea that... cutting statutory business tax rates would meaningfully reduce the effective tax rate on an incremental investment such that the tax cut causes businesses to increase investment... [and] the deficits resulting from the tax cuts would need to be small enough that they increase businesses’ cost of capital by less than the reduction resulting from the lower tax rate..."

Recent and Worth Highlighting...

About Brad DeLong

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We Are with Her!

Looking Forward to Four Years During Which Most if Not All of America's Potential for Human Progress Is Likely to Be Wasted

With each passing day Donald Trump looks more and more like Silvio Berlusconi: bunga-bunga governance, with a number of unlikely and unforeseen disasters and a major drag on the country--except in states where his policies are neutralized.

Nevertheless, remember: WE ARE WITH HER!

Blogging: What to Expect Here

The purpose of this weblog is to be the best possible portal into what I am thinking, what I am reading, what I think about what I am reading, and what other smart people think about what I am reading...

"Bring expertise, bring a willingness to learn, bring good humor, bring a desire to improve the world—and also bring a low tolerance for lies and bullshit..." — Brad DeLong

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