Scoring CBO is required to develop a cost estimate for virtually every bill reported by Congressional committees to show how it would affect spending or revenues over the next five years or more. We assume that the filename will charge shortly, to reflect this year's publications. The term tax expenditure refers to the money the government loses whenever a taxpayer takes advantage of a tax break. Some examples of popular tax expenditures include the accelerated depreciation of machinery and equipment, and the earned income tax credit. The Budget Act requires Treasury to publish a list of tax expenditures each year.
Tax expenditures are important because their net effect runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
There's no statutory definition of a tax expenditure. Emergency Appropriations, Contingent Emergency Appropriations. The Budget Act not only lays out the budget caps and their enforcement, but also provides exceptions to the caps. The Budget Act requires both Congress and the president to designate the line item as emergency. The president normally does this when he submits the budget or when he submits budget amendments and supplementals to Congress to act upon.