The Current State of Inflation Indexing in the Internal Revenue Code

Inflation’s impact on taxes is generally not a mainstream concern during inflationary periods, but inflation does influence tax returns each tax year. Legislators first addressed inflation’s impact on taxes in the 1980s following a period of high inflation in the mid- and late 1970s. Inflation has mostly been held in check since that period, but high inflation rates returned in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. This new inflationary period provides motivation to consider whether the U.S. tax system is still responding appropriately to inflation. Our research highlights several tax provisions that are annually indexed for inflation and several provisions that are not. For the highlighted provisions not annually indexed for inflation, we discuss the economic impacts of the legislative decisions that left these provisions stuck in the past. Further, we provide some discussion about possible legislative/political justifications for the intermittent use of inflation indexing in tax law. Data Availability: All data are available upon request.