Taxes

Last week, an analysis by Reuters suggested that U.S. firms pay less income tax than foreign competitors, in part because “the U.S. tax code is unusually generous with tax breaks and deductions,” also known as corporate tax expenditures. However, the Reuters analysis is at odds with other data and studies indicating that U.S. corporate tax

The Wisconsin Assembly and Senate this week are considering several tax reforms as part of the budget for the fiscal year (FY) 2022-23 biennium, which begins Thursday (July 1). Several were precipitated by the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s (LFB) announcement earlier this month that the state is projected to end the current fiscal year, as

A temporary gas shortage, caused by a hack attack, on much of the East Coast last month and fear of rising inflation have led some people to wonder if the 1970s are back. The Bureau of Economic Analysis report released last week did little to settle this fear, finding that the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE)

Table of Contents Key Findings Net operating loss (NOL) deductions (carryforwards and carrybacks) help ensure that businesses are taxed on their average profitability, which makes the tax code more neutral across businesses and over time. Ideally, countries should allow their businesses to carry their losses forward and back without any limits. However, no OECD country

Loss carryover 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 provisions help businesses “smooth” their risk and income, making the tax

A key theme of our Options for Reforming America’s Tax Code 2.0 is that tax policy is a matter of trade-offs. For example, expanding the generosity of tax credits for lower-income individuals can help make the tax code more progressive, but it also reduces federal revenue. Pairing a credit expansion with a tax offset may

On Thursday, New Hampshire lawmakers are scheduled to take up a budget conference report which contains several tax reforms negotiated by both chambers that would ultimately make New Hampshire the ninth state to impose no tax on individual income. These reforms floated at the beginning of the 2021 session found their way into HB 2,

Whether you’re a self-appointed connoisseur or an occasional sipper of chardonnay, you may not have thought about the taxes that go into your wine purchase. But now you can quench your newfound thirst for excise tax info with this week’s map, which compares wine taxes among the 50 states, expressed in dollars per gallon. States tend to

Recent discussions of a global minimum tax may lead many to believe that there is just one proposal being discussed for the world. That is not the case. While President Biden has led a renewed effort on global negotiations over minimum taxation, his own proposals for U.S. companies differ significantly from proposals that had previously

Six months after the approval of the digital services tax (DST), the Spanish government has finally published regulatory guidelines to implement it. The first digital services tax draft bill was published by the Spanish Council of Ministers in October 2019; in October 2020 an identical draft was published and adopted. Although the digital services tax took effect

A bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act this week to create a permanent 25 percent investment tax credit for investments in semiconductor manufacturing equipment and construction of related facilities—but their proposal would not address underlying bias against investment that exists in the tax code today. Rather than provide industry-specific tax

Of all alcoholic beverages subject to taxation, stiff drinks—and all distilled spirits—face the stiffest tax rates. Ostensibly, this is because distilled spirits (liquor) have higher alcohol content than the other categories, like wine and beer. This round of information is on us, so help yourself to the following map to see whether you’re shaken or stirred by how

Last month, the U.S. Department of the Treasury promulgated an interim final rule regarding its implementation of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provision restricting states’ ability to cut taxes. We previously outlined four questions Treasury needed to answer in its guidance and subsequently analyzed the text of the rule when it was promulgated in

With many state legislative sessions wrapping up for this year, and a new fiscal year about to begin, it’s a good time to examine some of the 2021 legislative trends—and sports betting taxes are among the more prominent. This year, 11 states have made changes to sports betting regulation and taxes, and Ohio is still

One of the challenges policymakers face is designing solutions that are targeted at actual problems. If data concerning a problem is either low-quality or out-of-date, then developing solutions becomes rather difficult. This challenge is particularly relevant to international tax policy. A problem that was identified in many studies at the beginning of the 21st century

The Flavored Tobacco Product Prohibition Amendment Act of 2021 (B24-0020) under consideration by the D.C. City Council would, as the name suggests, ban all flavored tobacco product sales in the District. That means banning the majority of cigarettes being sold, since more than 50 percent of the market is menthol flavored, which could have a

The negative effects of President Biden’s proposed 28 percent corporate income tax rate could be tempered by improving how the corporate income tax base treats investment expenses. As we explain in our new book Options for Reforming America’s Tax Code 2.0, tax rates only matter because there is a tax base where they apply—and the

As spending priorities are dividing lawmakers trying to negotiate among the various federal infrastructure plans, less time is being spent on the funding of one of the key components—our highways, both current and future taxes and fees. One of the current taxes, a federal excise tax on heavy commercial vehicles and trailers, is an important

The Biden administration has pledged to not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. However, the administration’s corporate tax proposals would likely violate that pledge, given that corporations are comprised of people who also might earn less than $400,000. The economic evidence suggests that in the long run, workers and consumers, rather

It took until the last day of the session, but Louisiana lawmakers succeeded in passing a tax reform package Thursday that would simplify a complicated tax code and make the state more economically competitive. Because these measures are reliant on constitutional amendments, voters will ultimately decide the success of the plan in October. However, if