Policies·us_tefra_1982

Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act 1982 (TEFRA)

USA·1982 – 1982·enacted 1982-09-03candidate

What the policy did

TEFRA (Public Law 97-248) partially reversed ERTA's corporate provisions by tightening depreciation, repealing safe-harbor leasing, and raising payroll taxes — the largest peacetime tax increase in US history up to that date. Enacted in response to widening 1982 deficits under the Volcker recession and declining revenue projections.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended

↑

tax corporate

fiscal.tax_corporate

Statutory and effective corporate tax rates, treatment of depreciation, and international competitiveness.

increased · moderate

higher corporate tax burden

Partial rollback of ACRS; safe-harbor leasing repealed.

Enacted by

us_reagan_first_term_broad_1981_1985

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Across 26 Swiss cantons 1990-2023, cantons with persistently lower effective corporate tax rates, looser regulatory burden, and higher Fraser-style sub-national economic-freedom ranks exhibit higher per-capita GDP growth, higher private business formation rates, and higher net inward migration of high-earning workers than cantons with persistently tighter regulation and higher tax rates.

hayek_decentralised_governance_swiss_cantonal_growthinferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['swiss_fso:gdp_cantonal', 'swiss_fso:business_demography', 'swiss_fso:tax_migration_register']

run pending

Ireland’s long-run convergence from a middle-income to a high-income economy during 1987–2024 is better predicted by trade openness, tax competitiveness, and FDI entry than by classic industrial planning.

ireland_market_opening_fdi_frontier_1987_2024inferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

supported

In an OECD-country panel 2014-2024, reductions in the top statutory capital- gains tax rate predict higher subsequent gross fixed capital formation as a share of GDP and higher business-startup rates, controlling for corporate-tax rates, interest rates, and institutional quality.

capital_gains_tax_cut_investment_response_panelinferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

SUPPORTED — coef=-0.1981 (sign matches claim -), p=0.00535

supported

Lower statutory corporate tax rates predict higher business investment and faster capital deepening, with larger effects in open economies.

corporate_tax_rate_investment_elasticityinferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

PARTIAL — coef=-5.758e-16, p=7.77e-06; effect magnitude effectively zero

partial

Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act produced smaller investment and output responses than Laffer-curve advocates projected, consistent with New Keynesian estimates of corporate-tax-cut passthrough in a near-full-employment economy with inelastic long-run investment supply.

tcja_2017_growth_effectinferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

WEAKENED — GDP gate clears at 0.97pp and PNFI is -3.73% below pretrend; EMTR-elasticity gate not loaded

refuted

Macron 2017-2019 labour-tax reforms produced measurable employment gains but had distributional costs; welfare-state-adjustment outcome is mixed and depends on transfer-side offsets.

macron_labour_tax_employment_distributioninferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

PARTIAL - employment leg clears but disposable-income Gini does not rise by 0.005

partial

Estonia's 1994 flat-tax 26 percent (subsequently reduced to 20 percent by 2015) and the unique 2000 corporate-tax reform (taxing only distributed corporate profits) produced a measurable rise in the Estonian top-1 pretax income share over 1994-2010 vs Baltic synthetic comparator (LVA, LTU), with the distributed-profit-only corporate regime channelling capital-income into top-decile reported income while reducing taxation of retained earnings.

tax_inequality_estonia_1994_flat_tax_dividend_reforminferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient pre-period coverage (years=1, donors=0)

run pending

The 2000 Schroder corporate + personal tax reform package (top personal rate cut from 53 to 42 percent staged 2000-2005, corporate rate cut from 40 to 25 percent, capital-gains exemption on inter-corporate shareholdings) is associated with a 1.0 to 1.5 percentage point rise in the German top-1 pre-tax income share over 2000-2008 vs Eurozone synthetic control, but no measurable rise in aggregate output growth beyond Eurozone trend.

tax_inequality_germany_2000_schroder_reforminferred

viafiscal.tax_corporate

PARTIAL — mean_gap=+0.3903, |gap|/pre_sd=0.43, p_perm=0.4 (gap below 0.5×pre_sd or placebo p≥0.10)

partial

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

Extra-profit sectoral taxes (Hungary, 2022)

UK Corporation Tax main rate increase to 25% (April 2023)

UK corporation tax rise announcement — March 2021 Budget

GBR·2021