Tax planning experts working for wealthy clients are already developing strategies to take advantage of the 2017 tax law’s new 20 percent deduction for certain pass-through income — or income that owners of businesses such as partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietorships claim on their individual tax returns instead of paying the corporate tax. As one expert recently...
off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Underfunded IRS Continues to Audit Less
April 18, 2018
Tax return audit rates, especially among high-income individuals and large corporations, continued a multi-year decline in 2017, IRS data show. That’s largely due to deep cuts in IRS funding and staffing since 2010, as former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen...
Report: Strengthening Child Tax Credit Would Reduce Poverty, Improve Opportunity
April 5, 2018
A new paper released by the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty proposes improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to enable more children in low-income working families to qualify for the full credit — highlighting research on the positive effects of...
2018 Funding Bill Falls Short for the IRS
March 23, 2018
The 2018 government funding bill, which the House and Senate have now passed, doesn’t include enough Internal Revenue Service funding.
House Considering More IRS Cuts
July 12, 2017
Policymakers have cut the IRS budget sharply since 2010, weakening the agency’s ability to serve taxpayers and enforce the nation’s tax laws. Even so, House Republicans continue to target the IRS for deeper cuts. The House Appropriations Committee will consider a bill this week that cuts IRS funding by another $149 million. Adjusted for inflation, this would bring the IRS budget to $405...
“Egregious” Employment Tax Evasion Grows as IRS Enforcement Funding Shrinks
April 27, 2017
“Egregious employment tax noncompliance” by employers has risen substantially in recent years while the IRS’s ability to recover the lost revenues and investigate fraud and embezzlement has fallen, a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) finds. More than 1 million employers...
Middle-Class Americans’ Big Stake in Social Security
April 17, 2017
While Social Security provides a foundation of economic security for people at all income levels, new research from the Social Security Administration (SSA) illustrates its importance for those in the middle. Among beneficiaries over age 65:
- Social Security is the main source of ...
Mnuchin: More IRS Resources and Staff Needed
January 19, 2017
Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin emphasized the importance of sufficiently funding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today, saying:
I am concerned about the staffing of the IRS. It is an important part of fixing the tax gap and I am very
...
EITC, CTC Together Lifted 9.8 Million out of Poverty in 2015
October 19, 2016
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) together lifted 9.8 million Americans out of poverty last year and made 22.0 million others less poor, CBPP analysis of new Census data shows. The data allow us to measure of the impact of the entire credits — including both the refundable and non-refundable pieces of the CTC, in addition to the EITC....
