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

Frank Sammartino’s career at CBO reaches back more than 20 years. Before being promoted to his current position in August 2009, he had been the Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis since 2007, and (in earlier service with the agency) he held that same position from 1993 through 1998 and was a principal analyst for eight years before that. In his work at CBO, he has had a major role in developing the agency’s models for forecasting federal revenues from individual income taxes and measuring the distribution of the tax burden among households. His analyses and research at CBO have focused on a range of issues involving federal tax policy and the distribution of income and wealth.

Mr. Sammartino has held various other positions in both the legislative and executive branches, serving as Chief Economist and Deputy Director of the Joint Economic Committee and in various capacities in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. He was also a principal research associate in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where he led a team of researchers in developing a new version of a dynamic simulation model used to analyze how public policies interact with economic and demographic forces to shape American families’ retirement security. He is the coeditor of and a contributing author to Social Security and the Family: Addressing Unmet Needs in an Underfunded System (2002).