Tax Files

President-elect Trump has promised to impose steep new taxes on trade, including a 10-20 percent tariff on all imports, at least a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports, and a 25-100 percent tariff on Mexican imports. At least a dozen estimates on Trump’s proposed tariffs show they will have a harmful effect on the American economy, supporting the standard view among economists that tariffs reduce trade and distort production, leading to lower standards of living.

The clear election victory for Republicans means they will retake the White House, Senate, and (by a slim margin) the House next year, putting them in the driver’s seat to determine the direction of tax reform. Republicans are likely to use a process called budget reconciliation, which allows for budget legislation to be passed out of the House and Senate via a simple majority.

It's not just famous people who have to think about choices.

Despite what people thought at first, the years of the pandemic were good for state and local tax collections. The big jumps in 2021 and 2022 haven't carried over into 2023, but most states' earnings are still strong and well above levels before the pandemic, even when inflation is taken into account.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) changes more than 60 tax rules every year to account for inflation. This stops something called "bracket creep." People move into higher tax brackets or lose value from credits and benefits when inflation rises instead of their real income rising. This is called "bracket creep."

Early property taxes were generally paid by farmers and were imposed mostly on land throughout the medieval era. These days, property taxes are also imposed on assets such as real estate, and they are paid periodically by individuals or organizations.

Interest rates are predicted to go down as inflation goes down, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that the government's interest costs will almost double over the next ten years, reaching 3.6% of GDP in 2033.

As the race for president in 2024 gets under way, candidates are starting to make plans for how they would handle taxes. Getting the government corporate tax rate down from 21% to 15% is a tax plan that both former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence supported.

A lot of new information about a draft multilateral tax deal was made public by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last week. The dump of documents has to do with OECD Pillar 1, Amount A, which is a plan to change where big multinational businesses pay taxes on their profits.