Description:
The Tax Relief Extension Act of 2015 would reinstate and extend certain expired tax provisions through December 31, 2016; almost all of the provisions expired on December 31, 2014, and those provisions would be retroactively reinstated, extended, and in a few cases amended. The bill also would make a few additional changes to tax law.
Because of the magnitude of its budgetary effects, this bill is “major legislation,” as defined in section 3112 of S. Con. Res. 11, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016. Hence, the cost estimate prepared by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) incorporates the federal budgetary effects of changes in economic output and other macroeconomic variables that would result from enacting the legislation.
Specifically, JCT estimates that enacting the bill would increase deficits by about $87 billion over the 2015-2025 period. That estimate includes two components. First, excluding macroeconomic feedback effects, JCT estimates that the bill would increase deficits by about $97 billion over the 2015-2025 period. In addition, the macroeconomic feedback would reduce deficits by about $10 billion over that period, JCT estimates. Most of the effects on deficits would result from changes in revenues.
Enacting the legislation would affect direct spending and revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply.
JCT has determined that the bill contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.
