Two Years of the Shelf Project

Abstract

This article celebrates the two-year anniversary of the Shelf Project and includes an inventory of the proposals made in Tax Notes in the semi-monthly column.

The Shelf Project is a collaboration of tax professionals from practice and academics to create and develop ideas to raise revenue by protecting the tax base. A broad, unavoidable, investment neutral tax base keeps tax rates as low as is feasible and minimizes the harm that taxes do to the private economy.

Congress will need to continue deficit spending in 2010, but the revenue needs thereafter amount to a serious crisis. Provisions that are politically impossible in ordinary times become political necessities in the impending revenue crisis.

Keywords: tax reform

JEL Classification: H20