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The Expense Cycle

Critics of last year’s tax bill are citing the decline in corporate tax receipts as evidence that the bill was too generous to Wall Street. True, corporate tax collections are down

Receipts from corporate income taxes totaled $452 billion in 2025, which was lower than their 2024 total of $530 billion…CBO expects corporate tax receipts to decline further in 2026, to $404 billion (or 1.3 percent of GDP).

…even as corporate profits are up:

Profits are booming at America’s biggest companies—and their leaders say that likely won’t change soon. From Target and J.M. Smucker to farm-equipment maker Deere, companies spanning the breadth of the U.S.

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2026-09-02T18:17:46+00:00September 2, 2026|

Revisiting the Myth of Corporate Decline

In 2019 we dismantled the claim that the corporate sector was withering away and that those pesky pass-throughs were to blame. Seven years on, the numbers have only made our case stronger.

Corporate profits hit $4.42 trillion last quarter on an annualized basis, while their after-tax profits reached 12.4 percent of GDP, the second-highest reading in decades.  C corps aren’t going away; they are consolidating and getting larger.

Which is why we continue to focus on the need for balance between public companies and private ones, and how the tax code’s treatment of each determines whether Main Street can

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2026-08-13T19:11:32+00:00August 13, 2026|

Who You Calling Progressive?  

One of the of the more entertaining aspects of today’s election news is the insistence on branding Abdul El-Sayed, the hard-left winner of yesterday’s Michigan Democratic Senate primary, a mere “progressive.” Meanwhile, his more traditionally progressive opponent, Haley Stevens, has been recast as a “moderate.” More moderate than El-Sayed, certainly, but…

With that as a conversation starter, here are some take-aways from yesterday’s remarkable primary election.

The Goal Posts Have Shifted

The most obvious take-away is how the goal posts have shifted on what counts as “mainstream” these days. The New Republic published this eye-opening piece just yesterday about how Senator John

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2026-08-05T23:12:00+00:00August 5, 2026|

199A Trigger Warnings

Tax writers need to put a trigger warning on future 199A discussions, particularly for DC tax experts.  It appears they are highly sensitive to the topic.

For example, in response to Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith’s recent support for increasing the 199A deduction to 25 percent, AEI’s Kyle Pomerleau posted some thoughts that, on the surface, appear to make sense:

Pass-through businesses are already tax advantaged. Although C corporations face a 21 percent corporate tax rate, their profits are also subject to the individual income tax when distributed to shareholders. After considering various tax provisions that reduce the

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2026-07-31T12:45:50+00:00July 31, 2026|

The Reasonable American, Continued

A recent Real Clear Politics-Emerson poll shows Pennsylvania residents oppose capping the wealth of individuals but appear to support raising taxes on billionaires and corporations. As RCP reports:

We began by asking Pennsylvanians whether the law should cap how much wealth any one person may hold. The answer was a “no”: 62% oppose such a maximum, compared with 21% who support it, and 17% who aren’t sure. That might make Pennsylvania look comfortable with concentrated wealth, but the rest of the survey suggests otherwise. We also find that 64% of respondents support raising taxes on billionaires, wealthy corporations, and Big

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2026-07-28T20:00:27+00:00July 28, 2026|