Recovering After the Pandemic

By: Raina Evans

The coronavirus pandemic began to wipe out millions of jobs in the US due to the troubles with the economy. This caused many people to seek unemployment as their only income. On March 27, 2020, the President of the United States had signed a law that assists people affected by Covid-19 by paying them unemployment money. Some of these laws include Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, and even Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. But where did all this unemployment money come from? There was a pre-pandemic unemployment program that was funded by taxing employers, including state taxes and the Federal Unemployment Tax Act tax, which is 6 percent of the first $7,000 of each employee's wages. But now many Americans are wondering if their taxes will increase even once everyone gets back up on their feet. According to the article “Tax Policy After Coronavirus: Clearing a Path to Economic Recovery”, “The typical response of lawmakers is to enact policies to “jump-start” or “stimulate” the economy with short-term measures such as subsidies, tax rebates, payroll tax holidays, and “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects. But history has shown that short-term policies lead to temporary results.” Maybe after the pandemic is over Americans will have to continue to pay these new taxes covering for the debt America has from the pandemic. However, one way the government could assist Americans in paying taxes is by an extensive approach. “This is necessary to identify the tax policies that are most harmful to long-term economic growth and getting each level of government to commit to removing or reforming those policies”. This will hopefully create a limited amount of spending Americans will have to pay for taxes, and let people focus on what they need during this hard time. 

Works cited:

“Tax Policy After Coronavirus: Clearing a Path to Economic Recovery” https://taxfoundation.org/coronavirus-economic-recovery/