The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United StatesPrinceton University Press, 1999 M03 14 - 272 pages Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs. |
Contents
Tables | 6 |
CHAPTER | 14 |
Major Programs 1995 | 20 |
INTRODUCTION | 43 |
CHAPTER 3 | 64 |
INTRODUCTION | 87 |
Employer Pensions | 115 |
Earned Income Tax Credit | 139 |