Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. And where I live, it is springtime. That's when a lot of people

start thinking about two of our national pastimes, baseball and paying taxes. This year, both of these

past times have some rule changes. Major League Baseball has finally allowed the use of computers to keep human umpires from making bad calls on balls and strikes.

And in tax matters, we have a variety of changes brought about by President Trump's one big beautiful bill act, which was signed last year.

Today on Freakonomics Radio, we don't have a baseball episode

for you, but we do have a tax episode. This is an update of an episode we made last year with

Jessica Reedle, a tax policy expert who had published her list of the top 10 tax myths.

In the episode you're about to hear, we have updated facts and figures as needed,

and at the end, you will hear from Reidel about what's changed since then. As always,

thanks for listening. In Washington, D.C., there is a set of people who move into town when their party comes to power

and who eventually leave once their party is voted out. These are the high-profile residents of D.C.,

the ones who make headlines. But for every one of these people, there are thousands more

that you rarely hear about or hear from. This is the other Washington, D.C.

These people work behind the scenes on all sorts of important matters, like U.S. tax policy

or the runaway national debt. Our guest today is a specialist in both those matters.

My nonpartisan approach is to be critical of everybody in Washington.

Do you have any friends?

No.

Not really.

Much of my policy has been sharing uncomfortable truth and, frankly frankly angering people.

So do you see yourself as someone who's sounding the alarm?

Absolutely. I've been sounding the alarm since 2001.

...