1、Congressional Research Service The Library of CongressCRS Report for CongressReceived through the CRS WebOrder Code RS21710January 15, 2004Tax Expenditures Compared with Outlays byBudget Function: Fact SheetNonna A. NotoSpecialist in Public FinanceGovernment and Finance DivisionThe federal governmen
2、t carries out public policies through tax expenditures as wellas direct expenditures and regulations. In fact, in some categories of federal activity, taxexpenditures far exceed outlays. A tax expenditure is the estimated revenue loss from thecorporate or individual income tax associated with specia
3、l tax treatment. The outlayequivalent tax expenditure is the amount of budget outlays that would be required toprovide taxpayers with the same after-tax income that would be received through the taxexpenditure and hence is larger than the corresponding tax expenditure. As noted in thefederal budget,
4、 the outlay-equivalent measure allows the cost of a tax expenditure to becompared with a direct federal outlay on a more even footing.Table 1 presents, for FY2002, the Office of Management and Budgets estimate ofthe outlay equivalent of tax expenditures as a percentage of outlays by the functionalca
