Tax Justice Digest: New Eight-Year Data Reveals Corporations Aren’t Paying Their Fair Share

March 9, 2017

ITEP Staff

In the Tax Justice Digest we recap the latest reports, blog posts, and analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve been working on lately. 

New Study Explores the 35 Percent Corporate Tax Myth
A comprehensive, eight-year study of profitable Fortune 500 corporations finds that, on average, the nation’s richest firms paid a 21.2 percent effective tax rate between 2008 and 2015, but a significant number (100) managed to pay no taxes in at least one year, 24 paid zero in four out of eight years, and 18 firms paid zero taxes over eight years.

This is the first time ITEP has examined eight years’ worth of corporate data for profitable Fortune 500 firms. The study comes at a time when members of Congress and the Trump Administration have signaled corporate tax reform is a top priority and will focus on lowering the top corporate tax rate. Read more

The Not So Good and Very Awful Elements of the GOP Health Care Proposal
The jig is up. The GOP plan to repeal and replace (and allegedly improve) the Affordable Care Act is a farce of monumental proportions. Not only would repeal be extraordinarily costly based on the most conservative estimates, it would cut taxes on upper-income people while reducing access to care for lower-income people. If enacted, the plan would be successful solely for those whose broader ideological goal is to reduce taxes for wealthy people. Read more

International Women’s Day: A Tax Perspective
International Women’s Day draws attention to progress that has been made and the work that still needs to be done in advancing gender equality. Many campaigns on issues such as equal pay or paid family leave acknowledge that economic policies impact women and men differently. But we often overlook the role governments’ budgeting and taxation practices can play in advancing or preventing progress. Read more

The State Rundown: Much Ado about Consumption Taxes
This week brings more news of states considering reforms to their consumption taxes, on everything from gasoline in South Carolina and Tennessee, to marijuana in Pennsylvania, to groceries in Idaho and Utah, and to practically everything in West Virginia. Meanwhile, the fiscal fallout of Kansas’s failed ‘tax experiment’ has new consequences as the state’s Supreme Court found the state is unconstitutionally underfunding public schools. Read more

If you have any feedback on the Digest or tax stories you’re watching that we should check out too please email me [email protected]

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