TAX REFORM TO PROMOTE ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL - TAX POLICIES TO EXPAND ECONOMIC GROWTH AND INCREASE

This would simplify the tax code and reduce the opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance. [...] Avoid Unproductive Tax Reforms I understand that this committee is considering the FairTax—a national retail sales tax similar to the tax imposed by many states and localities—as a fair and simple pro-growth tax reform. [...] It would be remove almost all of the progressivity of the current tax system because it would exempt from tax most of the income of high-income people. [...] Economist Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution and Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute recently calculated that, after correcting math errors, assuming a tax base similar to that applied at the state level, and assuming a modest level of evasion, the FairTax could increase deficits by $27.7 trillion over the next decade—or more.14 If the errors identified by Gale and Pomerleau ar. [...] The Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service both provide periodic reports on tax expenditures and the Joint Committee on Taxation and Office of Management and Budget compile lists of tax expenditures and estimates of their cost, but most tax expenditures continue with little or no systematic evaluation of their effectiveness.