David Kamin (NYU), Tax Reform After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 2025 Tax Notes Today International 213-20 (November 5, 2025)
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) and the tariffs imposed by President Trump have made progressive tax reform all the more urgent, but they have also made any such reform efforts more challenging.
The OBBBA and the Trump administration’s tariff policies have in some ways represented a continuation of more than two decades of tax cutting by Republican presidents and Congresses, but in other ways the situation has worsened. While the OBBBA adds to the deficits, it also includes significant reductions in healthcare, nutrition assistance, student aid, and clean energy subsidies. Those policies, plus the tariffs being unilaterally imposed by Trump, represent a fiscally significant and generally regressive combination of financing policies, the reversal of which should now be added to the progressive tax and fiscal reform agenda. …
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This report begins to define the magnitude of the challenge ahead. It describes how the political patterns followed over the last several decades could mean the triumph of a more regressive and unfair vision for the tax and fiscal system relative to what seemed achievable just a few years ago — and with attendant harm to millions of low- to middle-income Americans who would bear greater fiscal burdens as a result.
The article concludes by identifying some of the questions that are key to achieving progressive tax reform, and it offers preliminary thoughts on potential paths forward. …
