UM: Tax Code

Joel Slemrod, chair of the University of Michigan’s economics department and a tax policy expert, is interviewed for The Washington Post’s Wonkblog about the impact of possible changes to the U.S. tax code: “Myself, I believe that it would be good for the economy if we deal with the long-term fiscal imbalance sooner rather than later, so I would be in favor, at some point, of a package which has a substantial amount of tax increases in it. The policy question, though, is, ‘When is that moment?’ The recovery is still fairly fragile, I think, but there’s a lot of consensus that in the long term, you need a debt plan that involves raising taxes nontrivially. But it may be the wrong time to do it. My sense is we should postpone falling fully off the fiscal cliff, while thinking about a credible plan for the debt.” [Source]