Tax Policy Center

Tax Policy Center
Tax Policy Center · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Name	Tax Policy Center
Formation	1989
Type	Think tank
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Leader title	Director
Leader name	Len Burman
Parent organization	Urban Institute and Brookings Institution

Tax Policy Center is a joint venture research group focused on federal budget and tax policy analysis. It produces quantitative estimates, policy briefs, and educational materials used by policymakers, journalists, scholars, and advocates engaged with Congress, the IRS, and federal agencies. The organization is closely associated with the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, and its staff includes economists and legal scholars who publish on tax law, fiscal policy, and distributional effects.

Overview

The Center offers microsimulation modeling, revenue estimates, distributional tables, and plain-language explainers tailored for users including staff on the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, budget analysts at the Congressional Budget Office, reporters at the New York Times, and researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its work intersects with high-profile legislative moments such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 deliberations, budget negotiations during 2013 shutdown, and periodic debates over AMT reform. The Center is known for public-facing tools that complement academic outlets like the National Bureau of Economic Research and journals associated with American Economic Association members.

History and Organization

Founded as a collaboration between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, the Center grew out of late-20th-century efforts to create nonpartisan technical capacity for federal tax analysis, drawing talent from places such as the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and university departments at Harvard University, University of Michigan, University of California, Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Leadership has included economists who previously held posts at the Council of Economic Advisers and the Federal Reserve Board. Organizationally, the Center operates within the administrative frameworks of its parent institutions, maintains a board with representatives from both, and organizes seminars with participants from the Tax Policy Center-adjacent research community, including scholars from Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, and law professors from Georgetown University Law Center.

Research and Publications

The Center issues a mix of short briefs, long reports, and interactive data tools aimed at analyzing legislation such as the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and proposals emerging from presidential administrations like the Trump administration and the Obama administration. Major outputs include distributional analyses showing effects across income groups (often referenced against Pew Research Center demographic studies), revenue estimates comparable to those by the Joint Committee on Taxation, and dynamic scoring exercises that engage methods used by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Tax Analysis at the Department of the Treasury. Publications frequently cite empirical literature from the National Bureau of Economic Research working papers and draw on tax law scholarship found in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.

Funding and Governance

Funding for the Center is reported as a mix of core support from the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute endowments, philanthropic grants from foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and contract work for nonpartisan bodies including the Congressional Research Service and international partners like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Governance arrangements involve oversight by the boards of the parent institutions and advisory committees that have included former officials from the Treasury Department, the IRS, and economists affiliated with the American Taxation Association. Staff disclosures and conflict-of-interest policies are published in accordance with standards commonly practiced by think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.

Influence and Reception

Analyses from the Center are frequently cited in reporting by outlets like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Bloomberg News and inform testimony before the Congress. Commentators from the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have engaged with the Center’s findings, sometimes endorsing methodology and other times critiquing assumptions about behavioral responses or growth effects. Academic reviews in journals tied to the American Economic Association and citations in National Bureau of Economic Research working papers reflect its influence on fiscal scholarship and public debate, especially during major tax legislation debates including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

Methodology and Data Sources

The Center relies on microsimulation models that incorporate taxpayer records, public-use files from the IRS, and survey data such as the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Current Population Survey. Modeling choices reference approaches used by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Tax Analysis, and often adapt elasticities and behavioral parameters grounded in empirical studies from the National Bureau of Economic Research literature and articles in the American Economic Review. Data aggregation and confidentiality practices are aligned with standards practiced at research institutions like the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution and with statistical protocols observed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

Category:Research institutes in the United States Category:Taxation in the United States