What's New
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report
December 17, 2018
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: One Year Later
One year ago, federal lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So rushed was its passage that provisions of the legislative text were scrawled in the margins. Congress passed the law on a party-line vote but there was no such partisan division among the broader public. Polling showed a solid majority of Americans disapproved of the tax bill and believed it was another giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest citizens.
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report
October 11, 2018
Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide
A newly released report by Prosperity Now and the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy, Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide, finds that the TCJA not only adds unnecessary fuel to the growing problem of overall economic inequality, but also supercharges an already massive racial wealth divide to an alarming extent.
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report
January 16, 2019
Who Pays and Why It Matters | MECEP Policy Insights Conference Keynote Address
SESSION DETAILS: 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. | Keynote Address: Who Pays and Why It Matters States have broad discretion in how they secure the… -
press release
January 15, 2019
Gov. Cuomo Has the Right Idea on How to Tax Recreational Cannabis
Following is a statement by Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the cannabis tax structure unveiled by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
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report
January 15, 2019
A Simple Fix for a $17 Billion Loophole: How States Can Reclaim Revenue Lost to Tax Havens
Enacting Worldwide Combined Reporting or Complete Reporting in all states, this report calculates, would increase state tax revenue by $17.04 billion dollars. Of that total, $2.85 billion would be raised through domestic Combined Reporting improvements, and $14.19 billion would be raised by addressing offshore tax dodging (see Table 1). Enacting Combined Reporting and including known tax havens would result in $7.75 billion in annual tax revenue, $4.9 billion from income booked offshore.
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blog
January 10, 2019
State Rundown 1/10: States Should Resolve to Pursue Equitable Tax Options
This week we released a handy guide of policy options for Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems, and are pleased to report that many state lawmakers are promoting policies that are in line with our recommendations. For example, Puerto Rico lawmakers recently enacted a targeted EITC-like credit for working families, and leaders in Virginia and elsewhere are working toward similar improvements. Arkansas residents also saw their tax code improve as laws reducing regressive consumption taxes and enhancing income tax progressivity just went into effect. And there is still time for governors and legislators pushing for regressive income tax cuts in multiple states to consult the research and pursue equitable options instead! We have a lot of news to kick off 2019, but be sure to make it down to our “What We’re Reading” section for recent reports on how the federal shutdown is affecting states, previews of the issues likely to dominate legislative sessions this year, and more.
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report
January 9, 2019
Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems
New and returning policymakers have a tremendous opportunity to improve their constituents’ lives and their states’ economies through tax policy. This report distills the findings of “Who Pays?” into policy recommendations that can serve as a guide to new lawmakers, advocates, and others seeking to improve their state’s tax codes. It explains the importance of favoring taxes on income and wealth over taxes on consumption, the value of certain targeted tax benefits for families living in poverty, the need to abandon ineffective, unnecessary tax subsidies for high-income households, and the promise of bold new options for improving the regressive distributional outcomes of state and local tax policies.
Who Pays? Sixth Edition
Poorest 20 percent pay a 50 percent higher effective state and local tax rate than the top 1 percent ITEP’s sixth edition of Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax System in All 50 States finds that most state and local tax systems continue to tax low- and middle-income households at higher rates than the wealthy.
Federal Tax Cuts in the Bush, Obama, and Trump Years
Since 2000, tax cuts have reduced federal revenue by trillions of dollars and disproportionately benefited well-off households. From 2001 through 2018, significant federal tax changes have reduced revenue by $5.1 trillion, with nearly two-thirds of that flowing to the richest fifth of Americans.
A Fair Way to Limit Tax Deductions
Repealing the 2017 tax law’s cap on SALT deductions without replacing it with a different type of limit would pile one bad policy on top of the other, annually add $88B to the $2T deficit-financed tax law, and mostly benefit the wealthy, new report finds.
Tax Cuts 2.0 Resources
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has state-by-state analyses as well as other resources that explain this legislation and its consequences.
ITEP Resources on the Proposed SALT Workaround Regulations
As taxpayers across the country find ways to circumvent the cap on SALT deductions, the IRS has proposed regulations to end "charitable donations" in the name of tax avoidance. ITEP expert Carl Davis shares resources for what you need to know about the SALT cap workarounds.
Impact
Whether it’s at the state or federal level, ITEP produces careful research and in-depth analyses of tax policies, and provides a voice for working people in tax policy debates. State advocates, policymakers and media often use our work to inform public discourse on current and proposed tax policies.
ITEP's Work in Action
Expertise
Federal Policy
ITEP’s federal policy resources provide quantitative and qualitative research and analysis on current tax policies, proposals, and reform options. Its distributional analyses highlight how tax proposals will affect low-income, middle-class and wealthy Americans nationally and in all 50 states.
Learn more about our Federal Policy work
State Policy
State taxes pay for essential public services, from education to health care. But the ideal design of a tax system is complicated. ITEP’s state policy resources offer insights into central issues, including the impact of state tax systems on individuals, families, and businesses. Its work also analyzes the sustainability of revenue sources over time.
Learn more about our State Policy work
Corporate Tax Research
ITEP’s corporate tax research examines the tax practices of Fortune 500 companies. Besides its corporate study on average effective tax rates paid by the nation’s largest, most profitable corporations, ITEP produces research on subjects such as offshore cash holdings, tax haven abuse, executive stock options and other tax loopholes.
Expert's View
The truth is, if lawmakers truly wanted to craft a tax overhaul that would benefit working people most, they would have started from fundamentally different principles and developed policies that would provide true tax relief for all working families while shutting down favorable tax treatment for rich people.
