Eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits reduces incentives to save and work while increasing federal debt. Wages and GDP fall over time. The policy primarily benefits high-income households nearing or in retirement while harming households under thirty and all future generations across the entire income distribution.
Treasury debt held by the public is an explicit pay-as-you-go obligation. The government also runs implicit pay-as-you-go obligations, such as Social Security and Medicare Part A, which are twice as large. Both types of obligations require tax increases and spending cuts to balance the budget over time.
The deduction for pass-through income under section 199A provides a benefit in excess of 20 percent (âexcess benefitâ) for some taxpayers due to its interaction with the progressive tax rate system. As Congress considers extending 199A beyond 2025, options to remove the excess benefit while maintaining the 20 percent tax benefit could raise between $46B and $178B over the 10-year budget window, depending on design.
A package of 13 major tax and spending reforms, based on standard public economics design principles, is shown to reduce federal debt, increase social insurance, and expand the economy more than any previously analyzed policies by PWBM.
President Biden recently proposed that Medicare and Medicaid cover obesity medications starting in 2026. PWBM estimates a 10-year cost of $140 billion.
The COVID-19 spike in mortality is the pandemicâs most direct demographic consequence, but not the only one. Factoring in changes in fertility, disruptions to immigration, and indirect demographic spillovers, we estimate that the pandemic reduced the U.S. population 0.5 percent over the long term.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a decline in births in 2020 followed by a rebound in 2021. We present new estimates of âexcessâ births during the pandemic, which show that on net over the two-year period, births were roughly in line with pre-pandemic trends.
We analyze new data from the US Treasury to examine historical revenue effects of TCJAâs international corporate tax provisions. We also provide updated conventional estimates to assess the revenue impact of scheduled 2026 rate increases on foreign income of US corporations and assess several proposals that aim to further increase tax revenue.
We explain how the PWBM uses its dynamic Overlapping Generation (OLG) model to analyze tax policies affecting foreign-earned income by affiliates of U.S.-domiciled firms. We evaluate two illustrative policy changes: we show how firmsâ tax liabilities and the allocation of capital between domestic and international production are affected by an increase in foreign tax rates and a decrease in U.S. tax exemptions on foreign-derived income.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to U.S. immigration. Policymakers imposed travel restrictions, stopped visa processing, and made significant changes at the border. The pandemic and policy response led to more employment-based immigration and increased illegal border crossings instead of reducing them.
