Progressive Tax Reform in the Era of Globalization: Building Consensus for More Broadly Shared Prosperity

by JASON BORDOFF and JASON FURMAN

It has been more than two decades since lawmakers last achieved meaningful bipartisan tax reform to lower tax rates and broaden the tax base. That reform effort was fueled by deep public dissatisfaction with the tax code’s complexity, loopholes, perceived unfairness, and high statutory tax rates, combined with the government’s desire to raise more revenue. In 1984, for example, an influential report by Robert McIntyre at Citizens for Tax Justice found that 128 out of 250 large and profitable companies paid no federal income taxes in at least one year between 1981 and 1983, and a Treasury Department study the following year showed that about 30,000 taxpayers with earnings exceeding $250,000 paid less than 5% of their income in taxes.1 Such studies provided momentum to close loopholes and enhance equity in the tax code.

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