Professor - this is a very interesting and nuanced analysis (as usual for your posts) highlighting the complexity of the issue and the challenges associated with building a tax code that is equitable and efficient. I add “efficient” because having just completed my 2020 filings, I can only conclude that the tax codes are a Frankenstein-like creation of patchwork parts such that a normal filer struggles to even recognize the inputs on their own return - a function of the many tax preferences (and penalties) you reference above.
I suspect you will cover this in a subsequent article, but it would be useful to have a sense of the magnitude of the shortfall between revenues (taxes) and expenditures (especially proposed expenditures included in the infrastructure and reconciliation bills), at both the Federal and State / Local level - and the fact that no realistic increase in income or corporate taxes will come close to closing that gap. This (and the associated debt burden) is a legacy that will ultimately have to be addressed.
Professor - this is a very interesting and nuanced analysis (as usual for your posts) highlighting the complexity of the issue and the challenges associated with building a tax code that is equitable and efficient. I add “efficient” because having just completed my 2020 filings, I can only conclude that the tax codes are a Frankenstein-like creation of patchwork parts such that a normal filer struggles to even recognize the inputs on their own return - a function of the many tax preferences (and penalties) you reference above.
I suspect you will cover this in a subsequent article, but it would be useful to have a sense of the magnitude of the shortfall between revenues (taxes) and expenditures (especially proposed expenditures included in the infrastructure and reconciliation bills), at both the Federal and State / Local level - and the fact that no realistic increase in income or corporate taxes will come close to closing that gap. This (and the associated debt burden) is a legacy that will ultimately have to be addressed.