Explaining Analytical Methods
- Report
How Changes in Funding for the IRS Affect Revenues
CBO describes how funding for the IRS affects CBO’s revenue projections and how CBO estimates the revenue effects of rescissions of such funding. CBO also estimates the budgetary effects of rescinding varying amounts of the IRS’s funding.
- Interactive
How Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Could Affect Employment and Family Income
This interactive tool, updated in January 30, 2024, allows users to explore how various policies to increase the federal minimum wage would affect earnings, employment, family income, and poverty.
- Presentation
Using Multiple Data Sources to Learn About the Race and Ethnicity of Taxpayers
Presentation by CBO analysts Rebecca Heller, Shannon Mok, and James Pearce, and Census Bureau research economist Jonathan Rothbaum at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting, Committee on Economic Statistics.
- Report
The Distribution of Household Income in 2020
In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing federal response had significant effects on the distribution of household income. Income inequality before transfers and taxes increased, but inequality after transfers and taxes decreased.
- Presentation
How CBO Projects Corporate Income Tax Revenues
CBO describes how it projects corporate income tax revenues, focusing on how it maps economic projections of corporate profits to projections of the corporate income tax base.
- Report
Trends in Corporate Economic Profits and Tax Payments, 1998 to 2017
Over recent decades, corporate economic profits have grown faster than the amounts that corporations pay in federal taxes. CBO examined the factors that explain why corporate tax payments have not grown with corporate economic profits.
- Report
CBO Explains How It Develops the Budget Baseline
The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires CBO to produce an annual report on federal spending, revenues, and deficits or surpluses. This document provides answers to questions about how CBO prepares those baseline budget projections.
- Blog Post
CBO Releases Updated Budget Primers and Interactive Tools
CBO is engaged in many efforts aimed at fostering transparency, such as providing additional information to help people understand the federal budget process and the agency’s role in that process.
- Working Paper
Current Work on the Distributional Analysis of Household Income Resulting From Policy Changes: Working Paper 2022-09
This paper introduces a standardized framework to analyze how policy changes alter the distribution of household income to complement CBO’s analyses of policy changes’ budgetary and economic effects.
- Report
CBO’s Use of the Income and Payroll Tax Offset in Its Budget Projections and Cost Estimates
CBO explains why it uses an income and payroll tax offset when estimating the budgetary effects of changes in indirect taxes, how the rate of the offset is set, and how it is applied in cost estimates and in baseline projections of revenues.