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Greg Leiserson Profile picture
Greg Leiserson
@gregleiserson
Senior economist @WhiteHouseCEA. Previously @equitablegrowth, @WhiteHouseCEA, @USTreasury, @TaxPolicyCenter. Personal account. Indefinite twitter hiatus.
Sep 30, 2020 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
New report: Cost-benefit analysis of U.S. tax regulations has failed. What should come next? 1/ equitablegrowth.org/research-paper… Also available in convenient summary version: Why cost-benefit analysis of tax regulations has failed, and how to fix it 2/ equitablegrowth.org/why-cost-benef…
Jul 6, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
.@equitablegrowth last week: The coronavirus recession highlights the importance of automatic stabilizers 1/ equitablegrowth.org/the-coronaviru… A recession is a broad-based decline in economic activity across the country. 2/ Image
Jun 9, 2020 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
New WP: Distribution Analysis as Welfare Analysis equitablegrowth.org/working-papers… 1/ This paper formalizes fixed-quantities distribution analysis as the primary ingredient in the welfare (and cost-benefit) analysis of tax changes. The fixed-quantities change in tax is the change in tax ignoring changes in quantities but including changes in prices. 2/
Jan 28, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Taxing Wealth, my contribution to the @hamiltonproj volume Tackling the Tax Code: Efficient and Equitable Ways to Raise Revenue 1/ equitablegrowth.org/taxing-wealth/ The income tax does a poor job of taxing the income from wealth. Investment gains are taxed only when assets are sold. Gains on assets that are never sold during a taxpayer’s lifetime are wiped out for income tax purposes at death. 2/
Jan 6, 2020 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Ok, pausing my twitter hiatus because @RichardRubinDC is posing questions that are at the very center of my work: if TCJA yielded a modest boost in the capital stock would that be enough to make it worth it? 1/ This is a (partially) answerable question but you must acknowledge that the purpose of tax cuts is to cut taxes, something our economic policy discourse largely refuses to do so. (I have thoughts on why, but we’ll save those for another time.) 2/
Oct 9, 2019 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
For @AEI’s #TCJANowWhat: A regressive, deficit-financed tax cut is not what the United States needed 1/ aei.org/economics/a-re… Tax economists will spend lots of time in the coming years studying TCJA’s impacts, but its policy merits depend far less on the precise results of these studies than on the basic fact that it was a regressive, trillion-dollar tax cut 2/
Mar 21, 2019 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
New from @equitablegrowth: “Net worth taxes: what they are and how they work” provides the background you need to understand wealth taxes. Some highlights: equitablegrowth.org/research-paper… The wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households own about 40 percent of all wealth according to the Survey of Consumer Finances
Dec 20, 2018 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: A Framework for Economic Analysis of Tax Regulations w/ Adam Looney @BrookingsEcon 1/ equitablegrowth.org/a-framework-fo… @BrookingsEcon An April agreement between Treasury and OMB means many more tax regs will be subject to a requirement for formal analysis than in the past, but it left ambiguous the details of that analysis. We fill them in. 2/
Oct 19, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The idea that implementing regulations for a new tax expenditure are deregulatory is...interesting 1/ On some level this merely goes to the ambiguity of labeling things benefits or costs. What does it mean for a regulation (or any other policy) to have negative costs anyway? 2/
Aug 8, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The Treasury/OMB MOA subjects many more tax regs to OIRA review and will increase the role of formal cost benefit analysis in the rulemaking process. But how should this CBA be done? Slides making four points: 1/ equitablegrowth.org/slide-presenta… The traditional A-4 framework does not provide useful guidance in the evaluation of tax regulations 2/
Jul 25, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Pro-tip: @equitablegrowth generally funds tax work under "macroeconomics" but we also have one tax-related project under "institutions" this year 1/4 “Wealth taxation and evasion: Quasi-experimental evidence from Colombia” @juliana_londono will leverage admin data from Colombia and information released in the Panama Papers to estimate the impact of wealth taxes on reported wealth and on the use of tax-evasion strategies 2/4
Apr 17, 2018 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Assessing the economic effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 1/ equitablegrowth.org/research-analy… In assessing TCJA’s economic effects, the focus should be on wage rates, the return on investment, and deficits as these will determine the impact of the legislation on the economic well-being of the public (welfare!) and the fiscal sustainability of the law 2/
Apr 11, 2018 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
To appreciate this thread, you need to know that the @TaxFoundation's static % change in ATI is inconsistent with the organization's position on how the economy works and the dynamic % change in ATI is a completely different concept (and likely incorrect on its own terms) 1/ In other words, @kpomerleau and @ScottElliotG are arguing for the superiority of the (implicitly static) % change in ATI but I’m unaware of a single valid (under their own assumptions) estimate of that quantity from the TF in the entire TCJA debate (or 2016 election) 2/
Apr 9, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
CBO evaluates the economic effects of the tax cuts as if people largely expect them to be extended, but current-law deficit projections assume they they will expire Image However the alternative fiscal scenarios do not incorporate economic effects. There's a notion of substitution between the economic effects of these two sets of policies Image
Mar 20, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Priorities for tax reform in @DemJournal w/ @HBoushey 1/ democracyjournal.org/arguments/taxi… @DemJournal @HBoushey Raise revenues in a progressive fashion; we should be investing more, not less, in children, infrastructure, and public health.2/
Feb 23, 2018 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
“U.S. Inequality and Recent Tax Changes” (slides from a recent presentation for a panel hosted by the Society of Government Economists) 1/ Two questions: (1) what effects will TCJA have on the distribution of economic well-being (welfare)? (2) what effects will TCJA have on the (observed) distribution of income? 2/
Dec 12, 2017 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Yesterday’s @jctgov macro analysis of the House-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a reminder of some of the important outstanding questions about the @TaxFoundation model 1/6 jct.gov/publications.h… .@jctgov says “reduction and repeal” of the estate tax has a negligible impact on GDP. @TaxFoundation says it boosts GDP by 0.7 percent in the long run 2/6 taxfoundation.org/ranking-growth…
Dec 4, 2017 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I didn't quantify in the piece because my uncertainty is too great, but since twitter is a more informal medium: my ballpark guesses are 1% of GDP (House) and 0.5% of GDP (Senate) 1/ But note that I think the answer might differ for estate tax change set to zero and estate tax set to zero in baseline and alternative. 2/
Nov 15, 2017 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The @TaxFoundation has posted a revised version of its score of the House bill. The estimates are likely still wrong (also true for the Senate bill). 1/ taxfoundation.org/2017-tax-cuts-… My original piece identified two errors in the TF model, but as far as I know the TF has not publicly acknowledged the second. equitablegrowth.org/research-analy… 2/
Nov 9, 2017 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: Two apparent issues in the @TaxFoundation TCJA Score could reduce estimated GDP effect in half 1/ equitablegrowth.org/research-analy… The TF appears to incorrectly model the interaction between federal and state corp taxes, overstating the effect of statutory rate cuts 2/
Nov 3, 2017 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
HR 1 THREAD: Early distribution estimates confirm expectations: the regressive nature of the plan is unchanged