Innovation and Infrastructure

The Hamilton Project: Issues

The Hamilton Project addresses the most important challenges related to broad-based economic growth-including education, economic security, saving and insurance, health care, technology and innovation, and others-through two types of papers:

  • Strategy Papers are authored by The Hamilton Project and offer specific policy proposals within the context of a broader approach to addressing our current economic challenges.

  • Discussion Papers provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to offer innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project's broad goals. Policy Brief versions of the discussion papers are also produced and widely disseminated.

For more information on specific topics, please see the following issues pages:
Economic Security Global Economy
Education Health Care
Effective Government Science & Technology
Energy & Environment


Featured Paper

Photo of Austan Goolsbee

The Simple Return: Reducing America's Tax Burden Through Return-Free Filing

by Austan Goolsbee
Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business

The costs of complying with federal income tax requirements are large, and are particularly unwelcome to many middle-class taxpayers whose tax situations are quite simple. Indeed, the data show that the costs of complying are regressive—lower, as a share of income, for wealthier taxpayers.

This paper proposes a program known as the "Simple Return," which would make it much easier for the millions of taxpayers with a relatively simple tax status to file their taxes. The Simple Return might apply to as many as 40 percent of Americans, for whom it could save up to 225 million hours of time and more than $2 billion a year in tax preparation fees. Converting the time savings into a monetary value by multiplying the hours saved by the wage rates of typical taxpayers, the Simple Return system would be the equivalent of reducing the tax burden for this group by about $44 billion over ten years. A Government Accountability Office report estimated in 1996 that a plan similar to the one proposed here could save the IRS close to $36 million per year by reducing the number of errors in tax filings and the subsequent need for investigations.

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