Tax Expenditures Before and After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Key Findings A tax expenditure is a departure from the normal tax code that lowers a taxpayer’s burden, such as an exemption, deduction, or credit. The list of tax expenditures in a tax system depends heavily on what one considers the normal tax code to be. Some tax expenditures are special preferences for particular kinds of economic activity. These may deserve elimination in order to fund broader tax relief, or they may be better off as spending programs for the purpose of more transparent government accounting. Some tax expenditures are attempts to change the U.S. tax system more broadly, often moving the tax code closer to systems employed by other OECD countries. These piecemeal efforts to change the U.S. tax code suggest that a broad reform to redefine the tax base would be welcome. The projected cost of tax expenditures in 2018 is $1.5 trillion, with $1.3 trillion in individual expenditures and $0.2 trillion ($200 billion) in corporate expenditures. The Tax Cuts…

Read more detail on Recent Tax Law posts –

This entry was posted in Tax Law and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply