This week on the SALTovation podcast, Katherine Loughead, Senior Policy Analyst at the Tax Foundation, discusses the importance of sound tax policy and how the Tax Foundation is conducting tax policy research to inform policy deliberations at the state, federal, and international levels. She talks about the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the Wayfair decision on state tax policy. Katherine also emphasizes the need for states to adjust to the new normal, including the rise of remote work and the need to attract businesses and taxpayers.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• The role of the Tax Foundation
• Trends in tax policy over the past five years
• States' unexpected revenue surplus post-pandemic
• How income tax complexity makes it hard to predict liabilities
• Challenges of property assessments and the public perception of taxes
• Helping the public understand tax systems

Quotables:

• "The Tax Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501 tax policy research organization and we've actually been around for over 85 years now and we work to advance sound tax policy at the state, federal, and international levels.” -Katherine Loughead [00:50]

• "Switching from federal to state has been interesting because so much happens every single year at the state level. So there are many ways you can help move the needle in the right direction. Instead of being a very small part of a big wheel, you're able to be one of a few players that are really having an impact, and that's been highly rewarding.” -Katherine Loughead [05:35]

• "We've had, of course, the pandemic and all of the state responses to that, everything that's happened at the federal level since then with federal aid and then now coming out of the pandemic, we've seen states have a lot more revenue on hand than they initially expected.” -Katherine Loughead [12:13]

• “People remember exactly what they paid in property taxes in a certain year, but don't add up all their receipts or have a strong sense of how much they're paying in sales taxes. It's a little bit here and a little bit there, but over time that adds up quite a bit. With income taxes, there's so much complexity to the income tax system where you get exemptions here and deductions there and then clawbacks here.” -Katherine Loughead [16:01]

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