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"A CBO Report as required by Public Law 93-344"--Cover. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The federal government devotes over a trillion dollars each year to tax provisions that pursue "nontax" goals. Scaling back these tax expenditures should be a high priority. Yet one-size-fits-all limits are often proposed, and are not good policy. Each tax expenditure generates its own mix of positive externalities and private benefits (or "programmatic benefits"). To choose the right limit, we should consider what programmatic benefits we would lose. The goal should be to reap programmatic benefits at lower cost. Different strategies are appropriate for each tax expenditure, including: tightening the definition of favored conduct; focusing on claimants who are easiest to motivate; favoring claimants who use the subsidy more effectively; calibrating how much favored activity we subsidize; and changing the government agency that administers the subsidy. We also should account for excess burden and distribution. Does repeal or a limit influence labor or savings decisions? Does it affect planning and administrative costs? Does it bring is closer to the distribution we want? In addition to proposing this three-part framework for limiting tax expenditures, which focuses on programmatic benefits, excess burden, and distribution, this Article also analyzes seven different limits. They have very different effects. For example, a "cap" eliminates the subsidy for high levels of favored activity. In contrast, a "floor" disallows the subsidy for low levels. "Haircuts," "maximum fractions," and "phaseouts" preserve the subsidy for both high and low levels of favored activity, but in weakened form. Each limit offers a different mix of strengths and weaknesses, making it a better fit for some tax expenditures than others. Like limits, tax expenditures also vary in systematic ways. This Article identifies an important distinction among them. For some tax expenditures, marginal benefits vary only with the activity level of all claimants in the aggregate; for others, marginal benefits also vary with the activity level of each claimant. When we subsidize green energy, for instance, the aggregate is our main concern; the goal is to replace as much carbon-based energy as possible, and it matters less who is doing so (as long as they do it well enough). In contrast, when we subsidize health insurance, we care a lot about how much insurance each individual has. The difference between what this Article calls "aggregate" subsidies (like green energy) and "individually-based" subsidies (like health insurance) can influence the type of limit we want. For example, caps are likely to be a better fit for individually-based subsidies than aggregate ones, since we care more about how much each claimant claims. This Article also makes a number of other recommendations, including: first, the subsidy rate often should vary for different tax expenditures; second, instead of using "basket limits" that govern a group of tax expenditures, we should tailor a separate limit for each one; and third, the subsidy rate often should vary with income.

The federal government devotes over a trillion dollars each year to tax provisions that pursue "nontax" goals, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance. Scaling back these "tax expenditures" should be a high priority, as many have urged. Yet too often, the same limit is suggested for a broad range of tax expenditures. In the 2013 budget deal, for instance, Congress revived a single limit on all itemized deductions called the "Pease rule." In 2012, both presidential candidates proposed their own one-size-fits-all limit. In the same year, the United Kingdom imposed a single cap on all personal deductions. Likewise, the Bowles-Simpson Commission, Martin Feldstein, Edward Kleinbard, and other distinguished commentators have each recommended their own version of uniform treatment.

This Review will focus primarily on the conceptual issues affecting the composition of the tax expenditure list and their relevance to current proposals for new tax legislation. In this context,the tax expenditure theory has been preeminently successful in shaping tax reform. The Review will not delve into the other aspect of Surrey's thesis, which calls for executive and congressional action to alter the budget procedure by integrating direct spending programs with the indirect tax expenditure programs and by adopting one amalgamated budget for the purpose of controlling overall federal spending. This facet of the Surrey thesis has not yet gained widespread congressional acceptance on the practical level.For those concerned with tighter control of the federal budget to reduce the deficit, however, this latest work amply describes and persuasively advocates the value of such an integrated budget policy.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine an unexplored aspect of tax expenditures: the tax-price implications of tax exemptions, deductions and credits. Although this implication of tax expenditures has not been adequately examined, two separate lines of analysis have been suggested by the existing literature. Some authors have emphasized the welfare costs of tax expenditures. To the extent that tax expenditures narrow the tax base the introduction or extension of a tax expenditure undoubtedly makes the cost of raising revenue more than it would be otherwise. This kind of cost, denoted as a welfare cost, can be incorporated into a model of individual tax-price determination. On the other hand, other authors have emphasized another tax-price implication of tax expenditures: that the introduction or extension of a tax expenditure changes the cost-shares faced by each taxpayer, exclusive of any welfare cost. Since an individual's cost-share is nothing more than his personal tax base divided by the aggregate tax base, this result emerges because a tax expenditure usually changes the individual's tax base in a manner disproportionate to the change in the aggregate tax base. This dissertation will explore and combine each line of analysis, both theoretically and empirically. In the first portion of the dissertation a model of tax-price determination is developed that explicitly incorporates the welfare cost of taxation. Various tax expenditures are then introduced into the model and their effects on individual tax-price schedules discerned. In this way the influence a tax expenditure has on an individual's choice over public sector size can be surmised. The next portion develops within the confines of a simple median voter model some potential allocative implications of various tax expenditures. This portion traces out the expected change in the median voter's desired quantity of the collective good, given various tax expenditures, via an analysis of the cost-share impact of the various tax expenditures. Although in this section welfare costs are not explicitly considered or all possible political cases outlined, the analysis does look at a set of cases that are of general interest. The final portion of the dissertation considers the influence tax expenditures taken in toto have on both the cost-sharing arrangement among individual taxpayers and the welfare cost to individual taxpayers. The results are used to gauge both the distributive and allocative implications of tax expenditures. ; Ph. D.

In all OECD countries, governments collect revenues through taxes and redistribute this public money, often by obligatory spending on social programmes such as education or health care. Their tax systems usually include "tax expenditures" – provisions that allow certain groups of people, such as small businessmen, retired people or working mothers, or those who have undertaken certain activities, such as charitable donations, to pay less in taxes.The use of tax expenditures by governments is pervasive and growing. At a time when many government budgets are threatened by population ageing and adverse cyclical developments, there is a pressing need to avoid inefficient government programmes, some of which may utilise tax expenditures.This book sheds light on the use of tax expenditures, mainly through a study of ten OECD countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. This book will help government officials and the public better understand some of the technical and policy issues behind the use of tax expenditures. It highlights key trends and successful practices, and addresses a broad range of government finance issues, including tax policy making, tax and budget efficiency, fiscal responsibility and rule making.

AbstractA framework for thinking about tax expenditures is presented in the form of answers to five questions: what are they, what are they used for, how big are they, who benefits from them, and who loses? Distinctions are discussed among the use of tax expenditures to fine‐tune ability to pay, to influence economic behavior, to mimic the features of a direct‐spending program, and for other purposes.

Whether the U.S. government should be allowed to claim credit for the private philanthropy of its citizens is a hot topic in today's foreign aid debate. Overlooked in this debate, however, is a form of aid that straddles the traditional public/private divide: charitable tax expenditures. Through the many tax privileges that the United States grants to its nonprofit organizations, the government implicitly foots some portion of the bill anytime these organizations send money abroad for development purposes. Unlike official development assistance (ODA), these tax expenditure funds are privately organized and distributed, yet unlike voluntary transfers they are paid for by the public fisc. This is not private aid; it is privatized aid. At the same time that direct expenditures on aid were falling in recent decades, these tax expenditures were rising. The basic, descriptive goal of this Comment is to show how nonprofit tax policies have shaped the content of American aid. The broader goal is to connect this insight with the literatures on tax expenditures and international development. If one accepts the Comment's theoretical premise, then U.S. government spending on aid is somewhat larger, and substantially different in character, than most commentators have assumed. Although tax expenditures on foreign aid raise a number of concerns, they also, I contend, possess unique virtues that can make them a valuable complement to ODA.