We all know about tax information for citizens, policy analysts, legislators, and the press. Data are compiled from a variety of sources, including the Urban Institute, Brookings Institution, Internal Revenue Service, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of the Treasury, the Federation of Tax Administrators, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In addition, we also assess whether these results hold if we assume that revenue reductions are partially offset by higher economic growth. Although reasonable models would show that these tax changes would have little effect on growth, we show that even with implausibly large growth effects, revenue neutrality would still require large reductions in tax expenditures and would likely result in a net tax increase for lower- and middle-income households and tax cuts for highincome households.
It would be possible to reduce the regressivity of such plans or even to maintain progressivity in such plans with reductions in the tax rate cuts for high-income taxpayers and/or significant reductions in the tax preferences for saving and investment, including the preferential rates on capital gains and dividends.
