New Effort Seeks to Educate Americans About Tax Policies

With help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, two Washington think tanks have created a new fund to help policy makers, journalists, and the public better understand the way tax dollars are raised and spent.

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, hopes to use a $2.5-million challenge grant from the Gates foundation to create a $10-million fund to analyze tax issues.

The Seattle grant maker will match one out of every three dollars the fund receives before April 1, 2011.

“Getting objective estimates and analyses into the public domain allows policy deliberations to unfold based on facts rather than spin, leading to improved decision making,” said Leonard Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, in a statement.

Mr. Burman said the new fund would enable his organization to expand its activities, including developing models for improving the tax system and building better analyses of state, local, corporate, and international taxes.

The next few years will be a particularly opportune time to discuss tax policies, said the organization’s leaders. Most of the tax cuts enacted in 2000 are set to expire in 2010, and tens of millions of baby boomers will retire, placing unprecedented demand on the tax system.