An excellent new study from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution provides an ultra-sobering view of the potential tax increase U.S. families face in taming the runaway debt and deficits crisis that’s been near-roundly ignored in Congress and the White House. We all know the hit to either incomes, shopping tabs, social programs, or a blend of all needs to be huge—though the towering size of the numbers found in the report still deliver a gut punch. The revelation that rocked this writer: On the tax side, the sole solutions are sweeping increases across virtually all income levels. Squeezing extra revenue from the rich won’t get close to getting the job done.
The paper—prepared by Jessica Riedl, Brookings budget and tax fellow—runs 132 pages, and primarily comprises highly revealing charts and tables. It contains a wealth of data that show, for example, how much worse our budget shortfalls and long-term borrowing become, versus the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) numbers required to follow only current law, if tax reductions in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) don’t sunset and get extended. That scenario’s so likely that it forms a better, and more depressing, baseline. Other decks spotlight that we’re running the biggest budget deficits in the OECD, and that debt per household stands around “you owe another mortgage you don’t know about” level of $235,000.
I focused on numbers showing the revenue, over and above the CBO’s 10-year projections issued in February, needed to stabilize federal debt to GDP at 100% by 2036, just where that ratio is projected to finish FY 2026. Keep in mind that load’s still daunting. It’s double the postwar average and the highest figure since a brief summit in 1946. Capping borrowing at that number will still saddle the nation with an immense interest bill that even now matches outlays for Medicare.
The key Riedl table on the “stabilization” theme shows the projected contribution of 16 individual revenue-raisers toward notching the goal. All but three fall far short. For example, imposing a 77% estate tax and 8% wealth tax, two measures proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would in combination close just 18% of the gap. A 50% income tax rate on incomes over $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples gets the U.S. about a third of the way to victory. Put simply: Pounding billionaires, the rich in general—or even just high earners and up—won’t work.
But a triumvirate of regimes fit famed bank robber Willie Sutton’s explanation of why he picked banks: That’s where the money is. They’re all taxes that target immense income bases. They would score using a formula that raises rates equally for all income groups, crucially including the middle class.
The first solution: an across-the-board jump in income tax brackets. Raising the extra $2.6 trillion for the 2036 budget needed to lock debt to GDP at 100—exclusively using that biggest of all today’s revenue sources—would require an increase of 12 percentage points. In other words, if your current average rate is 20%, you’d be paying 32%. The second fix: adding 11.5 points to payroll taxes, currently 15.3% for most employees—and also removing the approximately $180,000 income ceiling for the Social Security portion. The final big one is a value added tax, or VAT, a fiscal cornerstone of virtually all other OECD nations, though some deploy closely related national sales taxes instead. The U.S. is exceptional in never having either one. A VAT of around 30% would ring the bell. In setting that number, Riedl assumes that America would follow most of Europe in exempting the major “social goods”: home construction, health care, and education. “They’re a bigger part of the U.S. economy than in Europe,” Riedl observes. “So we’d need an even higher VAT rate than in Europe to collect the same percentage of GDP in revenue.”
Of course, the solution could be a mix of tax hikes from a number of categories. Or lesser bracket-lifting due to curbs to such programs as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—though virtually none of today’s political leaders dare mention that course. Once again, what all the remedies that score have in common is that they cover wider waters versus narrow channels. It’s mainstream Americans—our nurses and teachers, construction workers and accountants—that this government, because of its profligacy, must summon to pay the bill.
So how much extra would the average household need to pay by 2036? By then, the U.S. is expected to have around 144 million households earning an average of roughly $119,000 (assuming a 3% yearly increase from 2026). Since our examples project that each tax—income, payroll, or VAT—solves 100% of the problem, the number’s the same for each: $18,000 a year, or an extra 15% grabbed from the family’s incomes, leaving less for dining out, taking vacations, and paying the mortgage.
“The solution is that everybody pays, just like in Europe,” says Riedl.
The tax bell isn’t just tolling for the rich. As the Brookings/Riedl report shows, it’s tolling for all Americans.
