Slide presentation: How should Treasury and the IRS conduct cost-benefit analysis of tax regulations?

Equitable Growth’s Director of Tax Policy and Senior Economist Greg Leiserson participated today in the Tax Policy Center’s event “Costs and Benefits of Tax Regulations: Exploring Treasury’s and OMB’s New Responsibilities.” In his presentation, Leiserson argues that the traditional tools of tax analysis are the appropriate tools for the cost-benefit analysis of tax regulations, and that cost-benefit analysis should report estimates of the revenue, distribution, and compliance-cost impacts of a proposed regulation. Social benefits and social costs are not quantified in this approach—and should not be quantified—because doing so would require assumptions about the value of revenues and the appropriate distribution of the tax burden. Treasury and the IRS should not claim to have definitive answers to these questions in a regulatory impact analysis.