Contributor: Which tax breaks work, which don’t, and what that tells us

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Everyone in Washington loves tax credits and deductions. Politicians tout them as a painless way to help families pay for green energy , buy homes or lower the cost of healthcare . They’re also politically irresistible: No one wants to be accused of “raising taxes” by trimming perks that voters now consider to be entitlements.

But for all their popularity, “tax expenditures” — what budget experts call feel-good policies like the mortgage-interest deduction or education credits — are among the most corrosive and costly features of the federal tax code. New evidence backs up this skepticism.

Economists have long known that tax expenditures make our taxes unnecessarily complic