This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 15th, 2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

Bad news. It's Tax Day. Sorry. Cato's Adam Michelle has even worse news that income taxes are slated to go up in about a year and a half that he has a few ideas to fix things

We spoke last week. Did you do your taxes, Adam? I did do my taxes, yes. When did you finish

your taxes? For me, it was the last minute, waiting till this weekend would give me heartburn.

I did them last weekend.

And for our listeners, today's the day. We're recording this on the Friday

before tax day, so do your civic duty? It's not really a civic duty it's just that they have an

implied gun pointed at you if you don't do it and bad news for people who ended up

owing taxes I suppose is that in about a year and a half taxes are on pace to increase.

Why is that?

Yeah, so at the end of 2025, beginning in 2026, the 2017 tax cuts almost entirely expire, everything other

than the corporate rate.

And that means taxes increase on basically every single American. It's about a 400 billion dollar tax

increase each year beyond that point and if Congress does nothing that's what's

written in law. What would be the good policy here with respect to making taxes,

I guess, dependable in terms of what those rates are,

making the rates nice and low so people can be productive. What is the best case scenario for

like long-term planning of our tax system? So the 2017 tax cuts and reform move the tax system in the right direction, but it was by no means perfect and in addition to expiring, there's a lot more that's left on the table.

So the 2025 fiscal cliff leaves an opportunity for Congress

to make additional reforms.

They can continue to eliminate loopholes and subsidies in the tax code.

They can lower rates, they can combine tax brackets.

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