Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 35

This volume presents six new studies on current topics in taxation and government spending. Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial, and Matthew Weinzierl investigate the design of income tax schedules when there is uncertainty about the way taxation affects household behavior. Youssef Benzarti studies the costs of income tax filing, which have risen over time because of the numerous tax forms families have to fill out when filing their taxes and because of increased costs of itemizing deductions, and explores ways to simplify filing and reduce those costs. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Michael R. Strain provide new and comprehensive estimates of the impact of the US Earned Income Tax Credit on the employment of low-income men and women, finding that the large majority of the various expansions of that credit over the last 40 years have increased employment of single mothers. Zhao Chen, Yuxuan He, Zhikuo Liu, Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, and Daniel Yi Xu review the structure of business taxation in China, and describe a number of tax distortions and potential inefficiencies in the system. Mark Duggan, Gopi Shah Goda, and Gina Li consider how the Affordable Care Act has affected the health insurance and labor market choices of individuals who are between the ages of 60 and 64, and finds increases in insurance coverage and reductions in employment for some groups. Jeffrey Clemens, Joshua D. Gottlieb, and Jeffrey Hicks consider how reimbursement rates for health care providers under various government insurance programs affect providers’ willingness to take on new patients and expand their patient capacity.