Natasha Sarin (Yale), Lawrence Summers (Harvard), Fred Goldberg, Jr. (Skadden) & Leslie B. Samuels (Cleary Gottlieb), Tax Reform Project: Seeking Experts’ Ideas for a Better Tax Code, 182 Tax Notes Fed. 1027 (Feb. 5, 2024):
In this article, the authors announce the Tax Reform Project and invite tax experts to submit their ideas for improving the tax system to the project’s website for inclusion in a “practitioners’ green book” that will aid the development of tax policy in Washington. …
We are heading toward uncharted fiscal territory, which suggests the need for both creative revenue solutions as well as innovative ideas for improving the tax system. Revenue is not the only impetus for tax reform — there are deeper problems with the code today. It is notoriously complex. Its rules and burdens are often regarded as unfair. And it increasingly fails to keep pace with our modern economy. One silver lining of the imminent expiration of TCJA provisions is that it will provide an impetus to think productively and responsibly about our tax code.
The Washington tax policy process does not lack input. Every year, Treasury issues its green book, detailing each of the tax proposals in the president’s budget. The CBO collects wideranging “budget options” that would alter all manner of tax and spending policies. And a stream of tax proposals emerges from the Hill each year. While these proposals contain ideas worth considering, something is often missing. Washington’s current budget and tax apparatus is generally the product of policymakers, often leaving out the perspective of tax practitioners who know the tax code in and out from working with it every day. And existing tax proposals are scored nontransparently, in ways that may ignore many long-run effects of policy, focusing overwhelmingly on revenue estimates at the expense of other important tax policy goals, including efficiency, simplicity, and combating inappropriate inequities.
This is where the Tax Reform Project (TRP) comes in. The TRP will enhance the tax policy debate by inviting tax practitioners — including lawyers, accountants, commentators, academics, former policymakers, think tank researchers, and Tax Notes readers — to submit new ideas for tax reform through our online portal at the TRP website. Our broad objective is to provide a forum for ideas that could (relatively) easily be implemented in today’s code, given that the entire reconceptualization of our tax system seems unlikely to be on the horizon. …
Tax is a contentious area of policy. For many questions, there are no correct policy answers but rather a range of opinions on the desirability of different approaches in addressing often highly technical areas of the code. We therefore eagerly invite tax experts to weigh in on these questions themselves with their best ideas for tax reform by visiting the TRP website. Those who submit proposals will be offered the choice to be publicly affiliated with their ideas or anonymized if preferred. We just ask that proposals be accompanied by contact information to allow the TRP team to follow up with questions as we evaluate and analyze proposals. We look forward to your reactions, questions, and above all, submissions.
