How can tax policy strengthen the middle class?

This is the key question that policymakers should be asking themselves as they think about tax reform. Middle-class families are struggling as their incomes stagnate or fall and the costs of housing, education, and health care rise. A weak middle class holds back economic growth and undermines our democracy.

Tax policy can and should play a critical role in rebuilding the middle class.

Unfortunately, for most of the past three decades, Congress has designed tax policy to benefit the top 1 percent of Americans under the “trickle-down” theory—that these so-called job creators will expand the economy for everyone. In fact, these supply-side tax policies have been clear failures; the economy works best when it grows from the middle out.

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