John L. Buckley (Georgetown) has published Tax Expenditure Reform: Some Common Misperceptions, 132 Tax Notes 255 (July 18, 2011):

The debate on tax reform has focused almost exclusively on tax expenditures. This report will examine some common misconceptions that have become part of that debate and understate the difficulty of comprehensive tax reform. Most tax expenditures are not special interest loopholes. Many are long-standing provisions that survived the scrutiny of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The large tax expenditure estimates have created unrealistic expectations concerning potential revenue gains. The distributional effect of tax expenditure reform will be more complex than the simple premise that tax expenditures disproportionately benefit upper-income taxpayers. Finally, the political system will require an examination of the collateral consequences of reform.

Table 1 is a list of the top 10 categories of individual tax expenditures. … These categories account for roughly 95% of the total annual individual tax expenditures ($953 billion of the $1.025 trillion).

                                Table 1
                    (numbers are in billions)
 _____________________________________________________________________

 Capital gains and dividends                          $187
 Health (excluding payroll tax effect)                $181.3
 Pension and other retirement savings                 $167.3
 Owner-occupied housing                               $124
 Family-related benefits                              $101.9
 State and local government (non-housing)              $58
 Employee benefits other than health and pensions      $51
 Charitable deduction                                  $44.1
 Exclusion of government transfer payments             $28.5
 Exclusion of military and veterans benefits           $10

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