Arizona
Cronkite News: Unfair Arizona Tax System Unduly Burdens Poor Residents
October 6, 2014
Wallethub said its survey reached 1,050 people across gender, racial, income level and political lines. It compared what they saw as a fair state and local tax system with estimates of average state and local taxes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
August 5, 2014 • By Meg Wiehe
Sales taxes are an important revenue source, comprising close to half of all state revenues in 2013. But sales taxes are also inherently regressive because the lower a family's income, the more of its income the family must spend on things subject to the tax.
Tucson Weekly: Shifty Proposal
July 3, 2014
In other words, cutting the income tax helps those at the top way more than it helps the other 85 percent of taxpayers, who barely pay any income tax at all. But people at the lower end of the income ladder do pay plenty in sales tax, gas taxes, sin taxes and a variety […]
Arise Citizens’ Policy Project: Out of Step – Alabama’s Unusual State Tax System
June 11, 2014
Taxes are the tools that Americans use to pay for education, public health, transportation and other elements of the common good. Just as states differ in the scale of services offered, they also differ on the ways to pay for those services. Some states lean on property taxes to fund public services, while others rely […]
Reason Blog: Hurricane Season Sales Tax Holidays – Save Now, Pay Later
June 9, 2014
Gov. Scott and other politicians enjoy touting the benefits of these sales tax vacations because they are popular with voters. They say it helps the poor, and the retail rush boosts the economy. But are those claims true? The short answer from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is “no.” Read the entire article
Chicago Now: Pope Francis and a moral argument for immigration reform
April 14, 2014
(Original Post) By Teresa Puente, Sunday at 8:38 pm President Obama has failed to persuade the Republican controlled U.S. House of Representatives to pass immigration reform, but if anybody can make a moral argument it is Pope Francis. These two men who broke barriers, the first Latin American pope and the first African- American president, […]
The Fiscal Times: The 10 Best States for Taxes in 2014
January 27, 2014
(Original Post) BETH BRAVERMAN The Fiscal Times January 24, 2014 Anyone who has a head start on tax planning this year knows that many Americans – particularly high earners – are paying a lot more in taxes this year. But while there’s no dodging federal taxes, the pinch of additional levies varies greatly depending on […]
Shreveport Times: Taxes – Where is Louisiana?
November 18, 2013
Nov. 15, 2013 Written by Tommy Williams Special to The Times Right now, inflation is not meeting expectations — and that may be a good thing. Critics of the prevailing monetary policy and low interest rates have predicted inflation will rise. Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau for Economic Research, explained in 2012 that […]
Washington Post: The state that taxes the poor the most is… a blue one
September 23, 2013
(Original Post) By Niraj Chokshi, Published: September 21 at 10:00 am The state that easily handed President Obama a victory last November while passing voter-approved referendums legalizing same-sex marriage and marijuana consumption also happens to have the nation’s highest tax burden on the poor. Poor families in Washington state pay 16.9 percent of their total […]
Annual state and local finance data from the Census Bureau are often used to rank states as "low" or "high" tax states based on taxes collected as a share of state personal income. But focusing on a state's overall tax revenues overlooks the fact that taxpayers experience tax systems very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers pay a greater share of their income in state and local taxes than any other income group in all but 10 states (including DC). And, in every state, low- income taxpayers pay more as a share of income than the wealthiest…
Arizona is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
September 19, 2013 • By Meg Wiehe
New data from the Census Bureau appear to lend support to Arizona's reputation as a "low tax state," ranking it 35th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state's overall tax revenues has led many observers to overlook the fact that different taxpayers experience Arizona's tax system very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of Arizona residents pay significantly more of their income (12.9 percent) in state and local taxes than any other group in the state.2 For low-income families, Arizona is far from being a low tax state. In fact, only…
Fox & Hounds: Immigration Reformers Must Tell a Better Story
August 21, 2013
(Original Post) By Joe Rodota CEO and founder of Forward Observer, a research and strategy firm Monday, August 19th, 2013 In a recent column, Washington Post Wonkblog writers Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas ask: “Why hasn’t this been immigration August?” Five years ago, they write, individual members of Congress were “engulfed by tea-partiers” protesting […]
Tax Expenditure Reports: A Vital Tool with Room for Improvement
August 14, 2013 • By Carl Davis
State and local tax codes include a huge array of special tax breaks designed to accomplish almost every goal imaginable: from encouraging homeownership and scientific research, to building radioactive fallout shelters and caring for "exceptional" trees. Despite being embedded in the tax code, these programs are typically enacted with tax policy issues like fairness, efficiency, and sustainability only as secondary considerations. Accordingly, these programs have long been called "tax expenditures." They are essentially government spending programs that happen to be housed in the tax code for ease of administration, political expedience, or both.
The Davis Enterprise: Snippets of energy news
August 1, 2013
Back in the old days, when you went to the movies, theaters often would show a double feature, and these two movies would be preceded by a cartoon and a newsreel. The double feature is long gone, as is the cartoon, and the newsreel has been replaced with about 20 minutes of previews of coming attractions and, if you get there early enough, a bunch of advertisements.
Arizona Daily Star: Legalizing undocumented immigrants makes economic sense
July 29, 2013
(Original Post) July 28, 2013 12:00 am • Ben Johnson Special To The Arizona Daily Star3 As Congress takes a summer respite to figure out how to move immigration reform forward in the House, mounting evidence shows that reform would be a plus to the national economy. For instance, the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated […]
Capital Journal: What South Dakota is doing seems to be working
July 15, 2013
(Original Post) Posted: Sunday, July 14, 2013 10:46 pm David Rookhuyzen Dakota voices As a born-and-raised Arizonan I will always have a special place in my heart for the Grand Canyon State. But I have to say, in the past 10 months I’ve become a little enamored with my new home. South Dakota is certainly […]
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus: Kids count
June 28, 2013
June 28,2013 Once again Vermont finished high in the ranking of children’s well-being released earlier this week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The foundation’s Kids Count survey of the states measures children’s well-being in 16 categories relating to economic well-being, health, education and family and community. These include categories such as the number […]
Bloomberg Businessweek: Electric-Car Owners Get Taxed for Not Paying Gas Taxes
June 10, 2013
(Original Post) By Alison VekshinJune 06, 2013 Hugh Joyce, a contractor in Richmond, Va., owns three plug-in cars, and like many green-car evangelists, he’s unabashed about his love for them—especially his new $80,000 Tesla (TSLA) Model S. It’s “the most important vehicle since the Model T,” he says. “It’s the first electric car with a […]
Reno News & Review: It happens
May 23, 2013
(Original Post) By Dennis [email protected] This article was published on 05.23.13. Nevada has a crappy tax system. Here’s why. It was sweltering. Januaries in Carson City are cold, of course, but the Nevada Assembly hall was jammed with bodies and television lights. Even on a weekday evening people traveled to the capitol for these occasions. […]
The Fiscal Times: State Income Taxes- One Piece of a Complex Revenue Pie
February 25, 2013
(Original Post) By BRUCE BARTLETT, The Fiscal TimesFebruary 22, 2013 State taxes are once again making headlines. When California recently raised its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent, pro golfer Phil Mickelson threatened to leave the state for the no-income tax world of sunny Florida. Republicans in several states are pushing to abolish their […]
Bristol Herald Courier: Non-wealthy Tennessee families face high tax burdens, report says
February 7, 2013
(Original Post) Posted: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 12:02 pm | Updated: 2:27 pm, Wed Feb 6, 2013. BRISTOL HERALD COURIER Posted on February 6, 2013 by Roger Brown BRISTOL, Tenn. – Poor and middle-class families in Tennessee spend nearly 12 percent and 9 percent, respectively, of their total income on taxes, according to a new […]
The Town Talk: Louisiana’s tax code and proposal draw warning
February 1, 2013
Written by Mike Hasten Gannett Louisiana BATON ROUGE — Louisiana’s current tax structure is unfair to low- and middle-income families, a study examining tax structures says, and the tax revision plan pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal would make it worse. Matthew Gardner, head of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and lead investigator on […]
The Philadelphia Post: When it Comes to Taxes in Pennsylvania, It’s Good to be Rich
January 31, 2013
(Original Post) When everybody comes out to vote, (i.e. presidential elections) Pennsylvania’s a blue state. And at least in certain pockets, it behaves much like the northeastern liberal states the surround it, like New Jersey, Maryland, and New York. When it comes to taxation, however, it looks a lot more like Texas or Alabama. According […]
Business Insider: There’s A Reason Bill Gates And Jeff Bezos Both Call Washington State Home
January 31, 2013
(Original Post) Megan Durisin | Jan. 31, 2013, 3:43 PM Why does the wealthiest man in America live in Washington? The answer is in a report released this week by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Washington’s tax system is the most disjointed in the nation, leaving rich residents — including Bill Gates, the […]
Knox News: TN Taxes Hardest on Middle and Low-income Families
January 31, 2013
Nashville, Tennessee – Like most state tax systems, Tennessee takes a much larger share from middle- and low-income families than from wealthy families, according to the fourth edition of Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, released today by the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and […]
