Whalen’s solution is stakeholder engagement.

A. Analysis of Actual or Typical Taxpayers Congress should require its own expert staff to prepare analysis of the effects of proposed tax changes on specific taxpayers, including individuals with different family situations and at various income levels, and covering different geographies and demographics. This could be done by creating hypothetical taxpayers or it could be done by reference to actual taxpayers. 169The analysis should be specific and it should be politically relevant: it should include different typical taxpaying units in each state and each congressional district, reflecting features of each local economy. The analysis of a set of changes to individual income tax rules would estimate changes in tax liability for typical households, integrating data such as median income in the congressional district, state and local tax burdens and other characteristics specific to a given state or district. It could also include distributional tables indicating the tax liability changes per taxpayer by income band (e.g., taxpayers with [*317] income less than $ 10,000 will have tax liability of $ x less this year as compared to their anticipated liability under current law). 170The more granular and localized projections would be far more illuminating for voters than existing analysis. Taxpayer-specific analysis would connect voters to the actual decisions made by their representatives, bolstering democratic accountability and responsiveness. Reliable analysis of effects would provide a simple way for voters to provide input to their representatives and to hold their representatives accountable. Constituents would be empowered to contact the representatives' offices directly and, later, to hold them to account in elections. By helping voters become more informed, this information could benefit either incumbents-giving them material to bolster reelection by showing how they delivered benefits to their constituents--or challengers, showing the opposite. Information about effects of legislation provided in relatable terms could make it harder for representatives to support narrow interests at the expense of their own constituents, bolstering majoritarian responsiveness. The use of typical taxpayers already plays an informal role in tax policy debates at the federal level. During consideration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, various outside groups released analysis of hypothetical taxpayers and how those taxpayers would fare under different versions of the proposed legislation. 171Although these estimates were often non-partisan, the groups that produced them often had specific normative and political commitments that were relevant to the kind of [*318] data they might be interested in providing. Further, the assumptions built into their calculations were not always disclosed or clear. An officially sanctioned version of typical taxpayer analysis could include mechanisms for transparency and consistency between different sample taxpayers and across different pieces of legislation over time. This sort of information could help taxpayers base their opinions on common and consistent information, and develop a better understanding of what their representatives supported or opposed. 172This would empower individuals as voters and as constituents able to engage with their representatives. To be most useful for engaging participants in the lawmaking process and facilitating accountability and responsiveness tailored to the particular representative system that is the U.S. Congress, this analysis could be produced for each congressional district. That would allow voters to directly connect a proposed change in law to their own circumstances. Further, the tailoring could match prevailing economic conditions in each district. For example, in a suburban district with many families with children, typical taxpayers might include a family with the median number of children and the median income for such a family. In a place with retirees, analysis would focus on fixed income individuals without children. If a particular district were dominated by a single employer--for example, a large distribution center or manufacturer, or a government facility--the analysis could be tailored to that particular sector of employment and expected pay. The more specific and detailed the typical taxpayer analysis can be, the better for political accountability. The JCT could analyze a variety of different types of taxpayers--single filers, joint filers, families of varying sizes, young people, old people, and so on. The analysis should reflect differences across states or even within states. For example, a tax law might affect a family of four living in New York City differently than a family of four living in upstate New York, and differently than a similar family living in South Carolina. It could provide analysis of a family at the median income in each jurisdiction, and at the median national income for both. It could be further specified to account for [*319] relevant differences in state laws, for example anticipating the deduction for state income tax rates in each jurisdiction. Further, the analysis could reflect additional distilling of tax and other data to specify "the ways in which the tax laws have disparate impacts along the lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender and gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, immigration status and disability" as well as geographic location, across different industries, and so on. 173 Although preparing highly specific analysis of typical taxpayers in 535 different jurisdictions would be a burdensome task, it is certainly one that is possible, and indeed it should be doable with existing data. The JCT currently bases its distributional tables and revenue estimates on a data from of more than 300,000 actual individual income tax returns, which provides a very workable data set on which to build an individual taxpayer model. 174Combining this model used for revenue estimates with congressional district or more specific census data would require significant work but is doable. 175To the extent feasible, this analysis might also be integrated with broader analysis of the distributional effects of spending programs. 176 A further step towards transparency and accountability that would also sidestep the issue of modeling taxpayers would be to analyze actual taxpayers. This would mean the JCT staff would use real tax return data to find illustrative taxpayers. Already, the models JCT uses are based on actual taxpayer data, although personal information [*320] is removed by the IRS. 177Actual taxpayers' identifying information could be removed from the analysis to protect taxpayer privacy and comply with current privacy protections, but it would still be useful to inform the public in a potentially more meaningful way than would the use of hypothetical taxpayers. Alternatively, Congress could establish a procedure to request that individuals to a limited extent allow JCT staff to actually meet with them and discuss impacts of potential tax changes in non-technical terms, for example by reference to the taxpayer's budget and spending priorities or other potential effects.