Janet McCubbin, 2022 Davie-Davis Award Recipient

Janet McCubbin is a tax policy economist and research director, who has specialized in the taxation of low-income families and workers, health and retirement policy, and tax administration. She began her career in IRS’s Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, and later became Chief of SOI’s Special Studies Branch. In that role Janet led a staff of 50 in collecting and publishing tax return data related to international taxation, the estate tax, and non-profit entities. She also initiated major revisions to the IRS Data Book, oversaw an overhaul of the “Tax Stats” Web site, and co-chaired the annual IRS research conference. As a member of OTA’s Individual Taxation Division, Janet specialized in estate and gift taxation (including the development of estate tax reforms in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001), the earned income tax credit, and longitudinal models for distributional analysis. She was an early champion of the National Research Program and other compliance research efforts, and made lasting contributions to policies related to tax compliance and administration. After serving in leadership roles at SOI and AARP, Dr. McCubbin returned to OTA to serve as Director of the Individual Taxation Division, where she and her team played a substantial role in implementing and analyzing the tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and in developing and analyzing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. As the capstone of Janet’s career, she had the privilege of leading OTA, recruiting, retaining and directing a team of 50 individuals responsible for all economic analyses in support of the development and implementation of federal tax policy. As OTA Director, Dr. McCubbin led the development of tax proposals in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the implementation and analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (including a substantial revision of the income tax withholding system), analyses of tax proposals related to the digitalization of the economy, and the development of office procedures to produce regulatory impact analyses related to tax guidance. During her time at Treasury, Janet was a trusted advisor of Treasury Secretaries and other political appointees in four presidential administrations.

Dr. McCubbin is a former NTA Board member, and the recipient of the Presidential Rand Distinguished Executive Award, Treasury’s Exceptional Service Award, and two Internal Revenue Service Commissioner’s Awards. She obtained her B.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado and her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland.

A full list of previous winners can be found here.