Tax Tracker | A Reading Guide for the Evolving Tax Bills

Links for the 2025 tax debate.

Jun 27, 2025

The Senate is expected to vote soon on its updated version of the reconciliation bill, a sprawling effort to cut spending, extend the 2017 tax cuts, reform health care, increase border and defense funding, and deliver on many of President Trump’s campaign promises.

This Tax Tracker provides a reading list of relevant articles and analysis on many of the most significant tax policy changes in the House and Senate tax bills. It starts with some of the major economic and budgetary estimates so far, then includes links to diverse views on 14 major categories of changes in the bills.

Overall, the Senate version of the bill is significantly more pro-growth than what the House passed. It achieves additional economic growth by permanently extending expensing and other business investment tax cuts. The House bill includes a more aggressive repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act green subsidies, a bright spot in rolling back distortionary special interest provisions. Both versions of the bill include dozens of other new and expanded tax subsidies, credits, and deductions that will increase complexity, open new avenues for tax avoidance, and deliver little long-term growth.

The final pieces of the Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are still falling into place, and the parliamentarian has ruled some provisions (in their current form) do not comply with the Byrd Rule.

My side-by-side comparison of the House-passed and Senate draft is here. Tax Notes has a similar feature.

The Senate tax bill text is here (from June 16), and the Finance Committee section-by-section summary is here. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) section-by-section summary of the House bill is here.

Revenue and Deficits

The JCT released three revenue scores of the bill. It estimates the House bill would lower revenue by $3.8 trillion over 10 years from the conventional current law baseline. The Senate bill is estimated to reduce revenue by $442 billion from a current policy baseline and $4.2 trillion from a current law baseline. The figure below, by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Andrew Lautz, shows a side-by-side comparison of the revenue estimates by major provisions.

Because both the House and Senate include many temporary tax cuts (but more so in the House), the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimates that, if made permanent, the revenue reductions from the House tax cuts would increase to $5.2 trillion and the Senate would increase to $4.8 trillion over 10 years.

Including the spending changes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House bill increases primary (non-interest) deficits by $2.4 trillion. CRFB estimates the Senate bill is likely to add between $3.5 and $4.2 trillion to the debt (including interest). The full score of the Senate bill will be released after the bill text is final.

Economic Growth

Eight government and independent organizations have released “dynamic scores” of OBBBA, assessing its impact on the economy and changes in revenue due to the macroeconomic feedback. These complex models rely on strong (and different) assumptions and vary significantly in what they include and exclude. The consensus estimates show that both versions of the bill are pro-growth, but neither bill will generate enough dynamic revenue to offset the size of the tax cuts.

The table below summarizes the economic and dynamic revenue estimates. The estimates of the House bill show smaller economic impacts because many of the most pro-growth provisions, such as business expensing, are temporary. And thus, the Senate scores show larger economic effects because more of the bill is permanent. The models that include stronger assumptions about the negative economic and budgetary effects of additional debt tend to also have smaller (or negative) economic and revenue effects. Those with larger effects tend to assume workers and investors are more responsive to tax changes. The Council of Economic Advisers' estimate is an outlier; this is primarily because it leaves out some of the base broadening tax increases and offsetting spending cuts.