Taking on Tax: The Past, Present, and Future

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution convened leaders and experts to discuss the past and the future of tax policy in the United States. The event featured a fireside chat between former Speaker Paul Ryan, Peter Orszag of Lazard, and moderator Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post. The forum also included two discussions featuring Kimberly Clausing (University of California, Los Angeles), Wendy Edelberg (The Hamilton Project), Ben Harris (Brookings), Kyle Pomerleau (American Enterprise Institute), Nirupama Rao (University of Michigan), and Natasha Sarin (Yale University). The event coincided with the release of a wide-ranging tax reform proposal, by Clausing and Sarin, that would raise significant revenue, improve progressivity, and better align the U.S. with global tax policy. In addition, The Hamilton Project released an essay offering principles for assessing proposed reforms. 00:00 Introduction 12:33 Fireside chat 51:00 Discussion: The future of tax policy 1:14:25 Roundtable discussion: Exploring policy options, trade-offs, and consequences