On Wednesday 8, 2012, the House Committee on Ways and Means held a testimony on "The Interaction of Tax and Financial Accounting on Tax Reform." Here, Aparna Mathur contributes to their discussion.  

Over the past two decades, the share of working age Americans collecting disability insurance payments has doubled, from 2.3 to 4.6 percent of the population aged 25 to 64, with the largest increases coming among women.

Based on our reading of the evidence, the Supplemental Security Income-disabled children program has increasingly become a more general welfare program that in large part targets a population of able-bodied single mothers that overlaps with the TANF population.

There can be an appropriate place for government subsidies to influence the choice of vehicle fuel technology. But such choices should be subject to rigorous cost benefit analysis with a high threshold for approval.

Over the next several decades the largest fiscal challenge facing the federal government is the aging of the population, which will drive up costs for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. When smaller numbers of workers must support larger numbers of retirees, public policy should encourage individuals to do three things.

To establish Social Security as a sustainable, solvent program, changes are necessary. A wide range of reforms have been proposed in recent years, and many of those proposals include changes both to future benefits and to payroll taxes.

Alan D. Viard discusses the complications posed by the needless complexity of tax incentives, income-based phase-outs, and the alternative minimum tax.

According to historical data and a long record of academic research, successfully addressing the fiscal gap requires fiscal retrenchment on the expenditure side.