Fiscal Policy

Tax Audits Deter Tax Avoidance But Not Without Costs to Firm Performance and Local Economies

In new research, Ga-Young Choi and Alex Kim show that tax audits work to deter firm tax avoidance, but with unintended costs for investment and employment for the firm and the broader economy.

US Taxpayers Should Not Be Subsidizing Harmful Big Oil Mergers

Chevron and ExxonMobil claim their announced mergers with Hess and Pioneer take advantage of market efficiencies, but a closer look reveals an antiquated tax provision likely sweetening these dangerous deals. Antitrust authorities must carefully review the serious risks entailed in these proposed mergers. In parallel, the United States federal government needs to end large tax-free reorganizations—the most egregious way in which American taxpayers are subsidizing monopolistic practices, writes Niko Lusiani.

How Well Consumers Know Prices Matters for Tax Policy

The effectiveness of tax policy depends on whether sellers pass on changes in tax rates to consumers through changes in price. In new research, Felix Montag, Robin Mamrak, Alina Sagimuldina, and Monika Schnitzer investigate how this tax pass-through in turn depends on how much consumers know about prices. They show that if consumers are not aware of how prices for the same product vary between sellers, then they will be unaffected by tax changes intended to increase or decrease consumption.

Do Wealth Taxes Significantly Curb Wealth Inequality?

Politicians and governments in the United States and elsewhere have recently proposed or implemented wealth taxes to supplement revenue and reduce wealth inequality. In a new study, Samira Marti, Isabel Z. Martínez, and Florian Scheuer show how decreases in wealth taxes led to increases in wealth inequality in Switzerland, though they find that these decreases alone are not enough to explain the magnitude of widening disparities.

Modernizing the IRS Presents an Opportunity To Level the Economic Playing Field

Corporate America makes sport of gaming the tax authorities, especially after decades of budget cuts to the IRS. What dominant corporations make by hiring expensive tax and lobby teams to distort the rules in their favor, smaller businesses, workers, and the general public are forced to cover with higher taxes and worsened services. Competition shouldn’t hinge on who has more pull over the tax rules and how they’re enforced. Decisions made over the next year to modernize the IRS present a historic opportunity to shape a less entrenched and more competitive economy, writes Niko Lusiani.

Inflation Paranoia and the Return of the New Consensus in Macroeconomics

Economists have proposed two main theories to explain the recent spike in prices. Progressives have attributed the rise in inflation to corporate greed and have suggested price controls in response. Other economists have turned back to the New Consensus in Macroeconomics that arose in the 1970s in response to steep inflation blamed on the large Keynesian fiscal expansion of the preceding decades. Matías Vernengo writes that neither camp has correctly diagnosed the problems with current inflation. Proponents of Greedflation overlook the price stability of the last few decades even as market concentration increased. On the other hand, advocates of the New Consensus similarly forget their history and the commodity shocks and price-wage spiral that were the real culprit for inflation in the 1970s.

The Neo-Brandeisians Are Wrong About Greedflation

Some progressive politicians and advocates have argued that lax antitrust policies enabled the inflation surge that began in 2021 and that aggressive antitrust enforcement is crucial to combatting inflation. These assertions are misguided and misleading. Similar greedflation theories emerged during previous inflation spikes, but their promotion this time has proven counterproductive. The allure of trustbusting ideas, it seems, is starting to wane.

The US Has A Budgeting Problem…Not Exactly A Debt Ceiling Issue

Kurt Davis Jr. argues that the U.S. Congress should consider switching from a federal debt ceiling as a nominal value to one fixed as a percentage of GDP. This debt ceiling should, on the one hand, be high enough that the government cannot reasonably cross it, but punitive enough that it disincentivizes profligate spending. This will save the U.S. from the annual political theater that occurs around debt ceiling talks and focus the discussion on the federal budget (and potentially taking revenue and spending decisions to actually control the deficit).

Today’s Tax Code Empowers Monopolistic Corporations. It Has Been and Can Be Different

Niko Lusiani and Susan Holmberg write that the United States should tax profitable corporations not just to raise revenue and redistribute unequal gains but...

Biden’s Second-Best Economic Agenda

Efficiency is out and political economy is in. But what does that imply about making good policy? When Barack Obama was asked about carbon pricing...

Latest news