Specifically, we have been asked about the reduction of roughly $110 billion in our projections of corporate income tax receipts related to certain provisions of Public Law 115-97, referred to here as the 2017 tax act. All told, we reduced our projections of corporate income tax receipts during the 2020–2029 period by $127 billion (or about 4 percent) for a variety of reasons, which are discussed in Appendix A of the report. Since then, we have received questions about differences between those projections and the previous ones, which we published in August 2019.
Information about taxpayers’ behavior and recent regulations are just some of the factors that CBO incorporated into its most recent revisions another is changes in recent tax payments. In particular, more than two years following enactment, taxpayers have had time to better understand how the new tax rules interact and have more information about the implementation of the law, including regulations announced by the Internal Revenue Service over the past year. Those revisions reflect a number of factors.
Business tax consists of two separate taxes: the state business tax and the city business tax. If a corporation is not subject to the tax, but it has an officer, employee, agent, or other representative within the five boroughs, it must nevertheless file Form NYC-245, the Activities Report. A taxable association or publicly traded partnership is treated as a corporation for the purpose of this tax.
In addition, those receipts began to strengthen in June 2019. Specifically, the Bureau of Economic Analysis recently revised downward its measure of corporate profits during the 2016–2018 period, a change that helped resolve previously unexplained weaknesses in corporate receipts. Corporate income tax receipts over the past several years have been roughly what we would have expected if we had known previously what we know now about corporate profits.
If new data or information about taxpayers’ responses differs from our current expectations, we will incorporate those developments into our revenue projections when we next update them.Phillip L. For instance, detailed information from the tax returns for income earned in 2018—the first returns that reflect most of the changes made by the 2017 tax act—will be available later this year.