We evaluate the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA) pension tax break on sponsor contributions to defined-benefit retirement plans. We exploit cross-sectional variation in ex-ante exposure to the tax break. We find that the tax break induced an extra $2.8 billion of sponsor contributions to medium- and large-scale plans in 2017. However, we find strong evidence of reversal, both in terms of sponsor contributions and plan funding ratios by 2018. Our contributions model indicates that this reversal is consistent with more binding financial constraints in 2018 relative to 2019. Our results suggest that the TCJA did not have a long-lasting impact on corporate defined-benefit pension funds.

Tax evasion can be considered as a systemic fraud in which different parties such as taxpayers, lawyers, banks, and multinational entities interact. Here, accountants are key agents owing to their legal liability in tax reporting and their knowledge on accounting rules. The present study analyzes the role that accountants play in firms tax evasion by presenting evidence from a randomized field experiment carried out with microenterprises in Ecuador’s tax system in early 2016. The article evaluates to what extent a notification of accountants is more effective in increasing tax reporting than a notification of taxpayers, through five different treatments. The results show that simultaneous persuasive notifications of both accountants and taxpayers were the unique treatment that significantly increased firms’ declared income tax. Furthermore, it was shown that penalty notifications of accountants, rather than taxpayers only, were the most significant treatment at reducing revenue underreporting.

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of seven key TCJA provisions, including the tax cuts for individuals and businesses, the bonus depreciation of equipment, the amortization of R&D expenses, and the limits on interest deductibility. I use a dynamic general equilibrium model with interest deductibility and accelerated depreciation. I find that, initially, the tax reform had a small positive effect on output and investment. In the medium term, however, the effect on output will diminish, and the effect on investment will turn negative. The tax reform will depress investment in R&D. Government debt will surge.

We use experimental methods to investigate subsidy incidence, the transfer of subsidy payments from intended recipients to other economic agents, in privately negotiated spot markets. Our results show that market outcomes in treatments with a subsidy given to either buyers or sellers are significantly different from both a no-subsidy treatment and the competitive prediction of a 50% subsidy incidence. The disparity in incidence across treatments relative to predicted levels suggests that incidence equivalence does not hold in this market setting. Moreover, we find no statistical difference in market outcomes when benefits are framed as a “subsidy” versus a schedule shift.

The federal government and over thirty states nationwide offer a tax credit in lieu of certain expenditures incurred as part of historic rehabilitation projects. Several economic impact studies have shown the positive effect of the credit on job creation, property values, and environmental friendly behavior in Louisville, KY (Gilderbloom, Hanka & Ambrosius, 2009) and in the state of Maryland (Frizzell & Mitchell, 2002). Most of the studies of historic preservation credits are, however, nonempirical and evaluate only the economic impact of the credit. The societal benefit-cost analysis conducted in this manuscript is the first study of its kind of the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit (OHPTC) program. In addition, this study provides an OHPTC fiscal impact analysis (benefit-cost analysis from the government perspective).

The data for the analysis come from the county auditors’ offices, and multiple proprietary sources, including administrative estimates provided by the agencies managing the OHPTC program, and online survey of the developers. The sensitivity analysis accounts for the differences in discount rates and other factors. The study finds that the overall societal benefits will outweigh overall societal costs by 2023. From the fiscal perspective, the program begins to pay for itself in 2025, but the overall program costs will remain higher than overall benefits during the considered study period (until 2030).