Tax Analysis Division

Telephone: (202) 226-2680
Fax: (202) 225-3149

The Tax Analysis Division's primary function is to estimate and project future tax revenues and analyze the U.S. tax structure. Working from CBO's macroeconomic forecasts, revenue estimators in the Tax Analysis Division use economic models and microsimulation techniques to produce 10-year projections of revenues, by source, twice each year in advance of the annual budget outlook report and summer update. Those revenue estimates then are combined with projections of spending to give the Congress a baseline of the future path of the federal budget under current laws and policies.

The division's analysts also estimate the revenue changes that would result from proposed legislation dealing with such sources of revenue as payroll taxes, receipts from the Federal Reserve System, customs duties, fees, and penalties. (Cost estimates of other tax legislation are prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation.) In addition, the division conducts policy studies that examine how changes to U.S. tax law would affect the behavior of taxpayers and the economy.

 

Assistant Director for Tax Analysis

G. Thomas Woodward joined CBO in 1998. He was previously with the Congressional Research Service (CRS), where he specialized in fiscal, monetary, and macroeconomic issues. Most recently, he headed the Income, Financing, and Housing Section of CRS's Economics Division. He has also served as Chief Economist for the minority staff of the House Budget Committee and as an economist with the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office).