The historical economics essay discusses major tax changes through 2017. That history is not an exhaustive account of current tax law. This companion adds selected provisions enacted in 2022 and 2025, with effective dates and dated estimates. Both laws were enacted before the essay's December 15, 2025 publication; this is a separately prepared addition, not text that appeared in the original essay.
Tax rates, tax bases, deductions and exemptions are different measures. A lower headline rate does not establish a lower effective burden for every taxpayer, and a tax deduction is not a dollar-for-dollar tax credit. Distributional estimates also depend on which provisions, people, years and comparison baseline are included.
August 16, 2022 — A corporate alternative minimum tax
The Inflation Reduction Act, Public Law 117-169, section 10101, established a corporate alternative minimum tax, or CAMT, for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2022. It uses a 15% rate on adjusted financial statement income, with a corporate AMT foreign tax credit and other statutory adjustments. It did not replace the ordinary 21% corporate income-tax rate.
The law generally covers corporations meeting a three-year average annual adjusted-financial-statement-income test exceeding $1 billion. For members of foreign-parented multinational groups, special rules combine the group test with a $100 million-or-more test for the relevant corporation. S corporations, regulated investment companies and real estate investment trusts are excluded. Aggregation, shorter-period and continued-status rules also matter; these thresholds alone are not a filing determination.
The minimum-tax calculation is compared with regular tax and the base erosion and anti-abuse tax, with credit rules affecting the amount due. 15% is therefore neither an extra 15 percentage points imposed on every corporation nor a universal effective tax rate on unadjusted profits.
Sources: Enacted section 10101, 136 Stat. 1818–1828; CRS R47328, January 19, 2023, summary and “Distributional Effects”.
August 16, 2022 — An excise tax on stock repurchases
The same law, section 10201, added Internal Revenue Code section 4501. It imposes a 1% excise tax on the fair market value of covered stock repurchases after December 31, 2022, subject to netting for stock issued and statutory exceptions. The basic rule covers domestic corporations with stock traded on an established securities market; specified-affiliate and certain foreign-corporation rules extend its reach.
Exceptions include annual repurchases totaling $1 million or less, certain tax-free reorganizations, qualifying retirement-plan contributions, qualifying securities-dealer transactions, repurchases by regulated investment companies or real estate investment trusts, and repurchases treated as dividends. The excise tax is not deductible for federal income-tax purposes.
The 1% rate applies to the covered repurchase base, not to profits, household income or every shareholder's capital gain. It is not an additional one-percentage-point tax on each investor's personal income. The statute alone does not establish how much the tax changes investment, wages, share prices or executive compensation.
Sources: Enacted section 10201, 136 Stat. 1828–1831; CRS R47397, February 15, 2023, “Explanation of the New 1% Tax” and discussion of competing economic explanations.
What the 2022 distributional estimate shows—and does not show
JCT's August 9, 2022 estimate, JCX-19-22R, models selected provisions of the version passed by the Senate on August 7. Its inclusion list contains the CAMT and stock-repurchase tax, alongside Affordable Care Act premium-tax-credit changes and selected energy and other provisions. The final statute—not this pre-enactment estimate—is the authority for the enacted rules above.
For calendar year 2023, the table estimates a $8.833 billion aggregate increase in federal taxes for the included package. Illustrative rows show why dollars, tax-bill percentages and income percentages must be distinguished:
| JCT income category, measured at 2021 levels | Aggregate change in federal taxes, millions of dollars | Change relative to baseline federal taxes | Average federal tax rate, baseline → modeled package |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20,000–$30,000 | −$2,005 | −9.4% | 4.3% → 3.9% |
| $50,000–$75,000 | −$3,086 | −1.3% | 13.0% → 12.8% |
| $200,000–$500,000 | +$7,439 | +0.8% | 24.1% → 24.2% |
| $1 million and over | +$9,699 | +1.1% | 30.2% → 30.5% |
These are selected rows, not a ranking of all groups or laws. A minus sign means a modeled tax reduction; a plus sign means a modeled increase. The first row's 9.4% reduction is a percentage of its baseline tax bill, not a 9.4%-of-income benefit. Its rounded average-rate change implies a benefit of approximately 0.4% of JCT-defined income. The top row shown has a tax increase of approximately 0.3% of that income, not a 1.1%-of-income increase.
The dollar amounts are totals for income groups, not benefits or liabilities per person. These results cannot isolate either corporate provision's distribution, describe every provision in the 2022 law, or establish realized outcomes.
Source: JCX-19-22R, August 9, 2022, p. 1, footnotes 1–4, and inclusion list p. 6. CRS R47328, January 19, 2023, pp. 12–13, discusses the uncertainty of corporate-tax incidence and warns through its cited source that the JCT analysis includes provisions outside CAMT.
July 4, 2025 — Continuing and modifying the qualified-business-income deduction
Public Law 119-21, section 70105, removed the scheduled termination of the section 199A deduction by replacing its termination subsection. The final law retained the general 20% deduction, not the 23% deduction proposed in the House version. “Permanent” here means without a scheduled expiration in this enacted law, not immune to future legislation.
For taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, it widens the taxable-income ranges over which wage/property and specified-service-business limitations phase in: from $50,000 to $75,000 for returns other than joint returns, and from $100,000 to $150,000 for joint returns. These are phase-in range widths, not the income thresholds where limitations begin.
It also establishes a $400 minimum deduction for an applicable taxpayer with at least $1,000 in aggregate QBI from active qualified trades or businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates. Both amounts are indexed for taxable years beginning after 2026. That active-business condition matters: the floor is not a $400 cash payment to every business owner.
The general deduction reduces taxable income rather than setting a separate 20% tax rate or cutting the taxpayer's total tax by 20%. For illustration only, a fully available 20% deduction against income otherwise taxed at a 37% marginal rate would yield 29.6% on that slice of qualifying income (37% × 80%), before other taxes and limitations. That arithmetic is not an observed average effective burden, an investment effective-tax-rate estimate or an eligibility determination.
Sources: Enacted section 70105, 139 Stat. 161–162; CRS R48611, July 29, 2025, Table 1, section 70105.
July 4, 2025 — A higher estate and gift tax exemption
Section 70106 of Public Law 119-21 sets the federal basic estate/gift exclusion at $15 million per individual for 2026, applying to estates of decedents dying and gifts made after December 31, 2025. It removes the scheduled reversion to the lower exemption and provides inflation indexing after 2026.
The previously applicable exemption was $13.99 million in 2025. Comparing those two years gives an increase of $1.01 million in excluded transfer value, not $1.01 million in tax savings. It is also not the correct no-new-law comparison: the earlier law had scheduled the exemption to fall in 2026. CRS's July 29, 2025 report described that no-new-law 2026 indexed amount as previously projected at $7.14 million—a projection vintage, not the enacted 2026 exemption.
The basic exclusion applies to combined taxable lifetime gifts and the estate; it is not a new $15 million annual gift allowance. The top statutory estate/gift tax rate remains 40%. Exclusions, deductions, credits and prior gifts affect liability, so the rate is not 40% of every gross estate.
No income-group dollar-benefit or percentage-of-income estimate for this specific 2025 exemption change is established here. In particular, the JCT package tables discussed below exclude the estate/gift exemption provision. Historical estate-return data in CRS R48183 describe earlier estates, not the distributional impact of this law.
Sources: Enacted section 70106, 139 Stat. 162; CRS R48611, July 29, 2025, Table 1, section 70106; CRS R48183, July 14, 2025, “Rates and Basic Exemptions”.
Reading the 2025 distributional estimates
JCT released JCX-37-25 and JCX-36-25 on July 29, 2025, after enactment. Both analyze the enacted law's included tax provisions, not all spending and revenue changes in the law. QBI changes are included, but are not shown separately; the estate/gift exemption is explicitly excluded (p. 12). These tables cannot be relabeled as the distribution of QBI alone or estate-tax benefits.
Present-law comparison: calendar year 2027
JCX-37-25 uses the pre-enactment present-law baseline, including the scheduled expiration of temporary provisions. It estimates a $547.4 billion aggregate federal tax reduction in 2027 for included provisions. Below is the complete income-category panel from p. 1.
| JCT income category, measured at 2025 levels | Aggregate federal tax change, billions of dollars | Change as % of baseline federal taxes | Average federal tax rate, baseline → enacted-law estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Less than $15,000 | +$0.5 | +9.3% | 4.0% → 4.4% |
| $15,000–$30,000 | −$3.5 | −21.5% | 2.9% → 2.3% |
| $30,000–$40,000 | −$6.4 | −15.8% | 6.6% → 5.6% |
| $40,000–$50,000 | −$9.0 | −14.5% | 9.0% → 7.7% |
| $50,000–$60,000 | −$11.8 | −13.2% | 11.3% → 9.8% |
| $60,000–$80,000 | −$27.0 | −12.0% | 13.1% → 11.5% |
| $80,000–$100,000 | −$28.8 | −11.5% | 15.4% → 13.7% |
| $100,000–$150,000 | −$65.5 | −10.7% | 17.3% → 15.5% |
| $150,000–$200,000 | −$58.2 | −10.7% | 19.8% → 17.6% |
| $200,000–$500,000 | −$150.8 | −9.8% | 24.1% → 21.8% |
| $500,000–$1 million | −$72.8 | −12.3% | 29.8% → 26.1% |
| $1 million and above | −$114.0 | −10.1% | 31.1% → 27.8% |
| All included taxpayers | −$547.4 | −10.7% | 20.9% → 18.7% |
The $200,000–$500,000 group has a larger aggregate dollar reduction than the $1 million-and-above group in this panel; that does not tell us the average benefit per return. The latter group's rounded rate change, 31.1% to 27.8%, implies a benefit of approximately 3.3% of JCT-defined income, whereas the former's implies approximately 2.3%. The $500,000–$1 million group has a 3.7-point rounded rate reduction. These measures give different comparisons. No “largest benefits” claim should omit the measure and population.
A 3.3-percentage-point average-tax-rate reduction corresponds to approximately a 3.3%-of-income benefit when the income denominator is unchanged. It is not a 3.3% reduction in the baseline tax bill; the table reports a 10.1% tax-bill reduction for the $1 million-and-above group. Derived income shares here use rounded published rates, not unrounded underlying calculations.
Current-policy comparison: the same year and enacted rules
JCX-36-25 uses a defined current-policy baseline, treating specified temporary policies as continued rather than allowing their scheduled expirations. With that different comparison, the same included enacted provisions produce a $169.4 billion aggregate tax reduction in 2027, rather than $547.4 billion. For the $1 million-and-above group, the reduction is $34.9 billion, and the rounded average rate moves from 28.7% to 27.8%, approximately 0.9% of income.
Neither baseline is interchangeable with the other. Do not mix their dollar totals or describe a difference between baselines as a measured economic effect. These are July 2025 projections for 2027, not observed 2027 tax payments.
Sources: JCX-37-25, July 29, 2025, p. 1 and pp. 9–13; JCX-36-25, July 29, 2025, p. 1 and pp. 9–13; JCT's explanation of the two baselines.
Population, income and uncertainty
These JCT income categories use AGI plus additional items, including tax-exempt interest, employer health/life-insurance contributions and employer FICA contributions, workers' compensation, nontaxable Social Security benefits, Medicare insurance value, AMT preference items, an individual share of business taxes and excluded income of U.S. citizens abroad. They are not AGI-only brackets or necessarily households.
Federal taxes in the panels include individual income tax and refundable-credit outlays, employment taxes attributed to employees, excise taxes attributed to consumers and corporate income taxes. Dependents of other taxpayers and taxpayers with negative income are excluded. JCT calls the estimates preliminary and subject to change and excludes indirect effects. Corporate burdens assigned to individuals are modeled incidence, not bills sent to each shareholder or worker. The January 2023 CRS CAMT report discusses why incidence assumptions remain uncertain.
The 2022 panel uses income categories at 2021 levels; the 2025 panels use 2025 levels. Different category definitions, reference years, included policies and baselines mean these panels must not be combined into an all-laws ranking.
What this addition does not establish
These selected laws show that post-2017 policy included new corporate taxes and continued or enhanced other tax preferences. Headline rates alone do not prove which law was the most favorable to corporations or wealthy people, how every effective burden changed, or whether a law caused changes in investment, wages, wealth inequality or share prices.
This is general historical and policy information, not taxpayer-specific legal, tax or estate-planning advice. Detailed regulations, subsequent guidance, other tax provisions and individual circumstances are outside this selected timeline's scope. It is not a certification of all current law as of October 2026.
Related reading
Read the historical essay on trickle-down economics, tax policy and concentrated wealth, or browse Current Events.