Forecasting the Fiscal Impacts of Tax Incentive Programs: Unraveling the Revenue Puzzle

State legislative fiscal offices fulfill a variety of responsibilities, the most important of which may be preparing estimates of the potential revenue or spending impacts of proposed legislation. I recently spoke to a meeting of state legislative fiscal office directors at the NCSL Legislative Summit about the complexities and challenges of estimating the fiscal impacts of tax incentive programs. This is a different direction from our typical discussions about incentive evaluations, but it's an important topic that we will explore in this edition of the newsletter.