The papers in Volume 29 of Tax Policy and the Economy illustrate the depth and breadth of the taxation-related research by NBER research associates, both in terms of methodological approach and in terms of topics. In the first paper, former NBER President Martin Feldstein estimates how much revenue the federal government could raise by limiting tax expenditures in various ways, such as capping deductions and exclusions. The second paper, by George Bulman and Caroline Hoxby, makes use of a substantial expansion in the availability of education tax credits in 2009 to study whether tax credits have a significant causal effect on college attendance and related outcomes. In the third paper, Casey Mulligan discusses how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduces or expands taxes on income and on full-time employment. In the fourth paper, Bradley Heim, Ithai Lurie, and Kosali Simon focus on the “young adult” provision of the ACA that allows young adults to be covered by their parents’ insurance policies. They find no meaningful effects of this provision on labor market outcomes. The fifth paper, by Louis Kaplow, identifies some of the key conceptual challenges to analyzing social insurance policies, such as Social Security, in a context where shortsighted individuals fail to save adequately for their retirement.

The debates about the what, who, and how of tax policy are at the core of politics, policy, and economics. The Economics of Tax Policy provides a straightforward overview of recent research in the economics of taxation. Tax policies generate considerable debate among the public, policymakers, and scholars. These disputes have grown more heated in the United States as the incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the population continue to diverge. This important volume enhances understanding of the implications of taxation on behavior and social outcomes by having leading scholars evaluate key topics in tax policy. These include how changes to the individual income tax affect long-term economic growth; the challenges of tax administration, compliance, and enforcement; and environmental taxation and its effects on tax revenue, pollution emissions, economic efficiency, and income distribution. Also explored are tax expenditures, which are subsidy programs in the form of tax deductions, exclusions, credits, or favorable rates; how college attendance is influenced by tax credits and deductions for tuition and fees, tax-advantaged college savings plans, and student loan interest deductions; and how tax policy toward low-income families takes a number of forms with different distributional effects. Among the most contentious issues explored are influences of capital gains and estate taxation on the long term concentration of wealth; the interaction of tax policy and retirement savings and how policy can "nudge" improved planning for retirement; and how the reform of corporate and business taxation is central to current tax policy debates in the United States. By providing overviews of recent advances in thinking about how taxes relate to behavior and social goals, The Economics of Tax Policy helps inform the debate.

The book describes the difficulties of the current international corporate income tax system. It starts by describing its origins and how changes, such as the development of multinational enterprises and digitalization have created fundamental problems, not foreseen at its inception. These include tax competition—as governments try to attract tax bases through low tax rates or incentives, and profit shifting, as companies avoid tax by reporting profits in jurisdictions with lower tax rates. The book then discusses solutions, including both evolutionary changes to the current system and fundamental reform options. It covers both reform efforts already under way, for example under the Inclusive Framework at the OECD, and potential radical reform ideas developed by academics.

Part of a series that presents recent research on the effects of taxation on economic performance and analyses of the effects of potential tax reforms, this volume includes: an evaluation of Medicaid in the 1980s; medical savings accounts; and implications of a broad-based consumption tax.

Offers a comprehensive, region-wide analysis of the politics of taxation in Latin America to make reforms politically palatable and sustainable.

Edited by Parthasarathi Shome, this Handbook was written primarily for economists who are responsible for analyzing and evaluating economic policies of developing countries at an applied level, and who would benefit from a comprehensive discussion of the concepts, principles, and prevailing issues of taxation.

This paper examines the role of relative prices in economic growth and the possibility that relative prices are (or can be) partly determined by tax policy. In the opening section, the paper links relative prices to tax policy. Using an extension to a standard model of economic growth, it demonstrates that under certain conditions a simple tax policy, that determines the relative price of investment, can affect the investment rate and the permanent growth rate of the economy. The paper develops a method to obtain consistent data on relative prices for a large set of countries. Using these data in cross-country regressions, it examines how economic growth is affected by relative prices. The results of these empirical tests identify the relative prices as a key factor affecting investment and growth.