Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

California Budget & Policy Center: What Has Proposition 30 Meant for California?

January 9, 2017

Proposition 30, approved by voters in 2012, provided critical revenues to California at a time when the state faced daunting fi scal challenges. These revenues increased school funding and allowed for reinvestment in other public services after years of cuts. Prop. 30’s tax rate increases are scheduled to expire over the next several years. Although […]

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Problems down the road with governor’s highway plan

January 9, 2017

“The governor wants to get through the first year by spending down some of the rainy day fund and using part of reamining surplus funds. As far as short term solutions, it could be a lot worse. But big problems with the Governor’s plan show up in year two and beyond. The plan leaves a […]

Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development: Sustainable Solutions for Multimodal Transportation Infrastructure in Louisiana

January 9, 2017

The Governor’s Task Force on Transportation Infrastructure Investment​ is an 18-member Task Force established by Governor Edwards to recommend community-driven solutions for Louisiana’s transportation infrastructure investment needs. The Task Force submitted its formal recommendations to the Governor in December 2016. Read the full report here

North Carolina Justice Center: 12 Charts about N.C.’s Economy in 2016

January 6, 2017

“The economic challenges that face North Carolina families were front and center in 2016. North Carolina wrestled with the disconnect between political rhetoric and everyday reality this election year, thanks to a recovery that failed to boost wages or provide enough jobs for many of our communities. Here are 12 charts that tell the story […]

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center: A Fair Share Tax Plan for Pennsylvania

January 6, 2017

“One barrier to raising revenues is the reluctance of legislators on both sides of the aisle to place additional taxes on Pennsylvania’s poor and middle-class. That reluctance is well motivated. Over the last 25 years, incomes for the richest Pennsylvanians have been rising fast while incomes for all other Pennsylvanians have been stagnant. Despite that, […]

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State Estate and Inheritance Taxes

December 21, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Meg Wiehe

For much of the last century, estate and inheritance taxes have played an important role in fostering strong communities by promoting equality of opportunity and helping states adequately fund public services. While many of the taxes levied by state and local governments fall most heavily on low-income families, only the very wealthy pay estate and inheritance taxes. Changes in the federal estate tax in recent years, however, caused states to reevaluate the structure of their estate and inheritance taxes. Unfortunately, the trend of late among states has tended toward weakening or completely eliminating them. But this need not be so;…

Migration Policy Institute: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States

December 13, 2016

“While the United States has long been a top destination for the world’s best and brightest, it has fallen short when it comes to fully tapping the skills and training of these newcomers. As a result, nearly 2 million immigrants with college degrees in the United States—one out of every four—are relegated to low-skilled jobs […]

Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Those at the Top Would Get More Tax Breaks, Investments Would Suffer from Shift to Consumption Taxes

December 13, 2016

“The table below shows the impact, by income group, of two such hypothetical shifts. Notice that even when the shift is seemingly minor – one penny less on the dollar for the top income tax rate and one penny more on the sales tax rate – the top one percent of households get a $5,396 […]

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The Federal Estate Tax: A Critical and Highly Progressive Revenue Source

December 7, 2016 • By Richard Phillips

For years, wealth and income inequality have been widening at a troubling pace. A recent study estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 42 percent of the nation's wealth in 2012, up from 28 percent in 1989. Public policies have exacerbated this trend by taxing income earned from investments at a lower rate than income from an ordinary job and by dramatically cutting taxes on inherited wealth. Further, lawmakers have done little to stop aggressive accounting schemes designed to avoid the estate tax altogether.

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Fact Sheet: Preserving the Estate Tax

December 7, 2016 • By Richard Phillips

The federal estate tax is one of our most progressive sources of revenue and a critical tool in the fight against rising wealth inequality. Congressional legislation has significantly eroded the tax over the years, and now it is levied on only the wealthiest 0.2% of estates, meaning that 99.8% of estates will have no federal estate tax liability. The estate tax should be not only preserved but restored to a historical level to increase revenues and ensure more progressivity in the tax system.

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Privatization, Waste, and Unfunded Projects: The Problems with Trump’s Infrastructure Proposal

November 30, 2016 • By ITEP Staff

In his acceptance speech, President-elect Donald Trump placed a heavy emphasis on the need to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. In theory, expanded investments in our nation's infrastructure could generate wide support among the public and within Congress. And yet Congressional negotiations on this issue have repeatedly broken down because of disagreements over how to fund those investments. Unfortunately, a flawed proposal for new funding put forth by Mr. Trump fails to offer a realistic path forward.

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State Tax Preferences for Elderly Taxpayers

November 28, 2016 • By Aidan Davis, Meg Wiehe

State governments provide a wide array of tax breaks for their elderly residents. Almost every state that levies an income tax allows some form of income tax exemption or credit for citizens over age 65 that is unavailable to non-elderly taxpayers. Most states also provide special property tax breaks to the elderly. Unfortunately, too many of these breaks are poorly-targeted, unsustainable, and unfair. This policy brief surveys federal and state approaches to reducing taxes for older adults and suggests options for designing less costly and better targeted tax breaks.

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Comprehensive Guide to “Repatriation” Proposals

November 28, 2016 • By Richard Phillips

Corporations falsely claim that they have to engage in offshore tax avoidance maneuvers because the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high, an argument which has unfortunately found an audience in lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In 2017, Congress likely will evaluate a number of approaches to taxing the trillions of dollars corporations currently hold offshore. This report explains and evaluates these proposals, including a so-called repatriation holiday and deemed repatriation. Further, it explains why ending deferral of taxes on U.S. multinational corporations' foreign earnings could halt the widespread corporate practice of funneling money to subsidiaries for the…

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Fact Sheet: What You Need to Know About Repatriation Proposals

November 28, 2016 • By Richard Phillips

Fortune 500 corporations collectively have stashed $2.5 trillion in profits offshore, on which they have avoided up to $718 billion in taxes. It's no wonder that policymakers on both sides of the aisle are weighing legislative options to either tax these profits or create an incentive for corporations to "repatriate" or bring these profits to the United States so that they are subject to taxation. Lawmakers have introduced several "repatriation" proposals that would glean tax revenue from these offshore profits. But the only solution that will ensure corporations pay taxes on their offshore profits AND shut down the practice of…

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Collecting Sales Taxes Owed on Internet Purchases

November 18, 2016 • By Carl Davis

Retail trade has been transformed by the Internet. As the popularity of "e-commerce" (that is, transactions conducted over the Internet) has grown, policymakers have engaged in a heated debate over how state and local sales taxes should be applied to these transactions. This debate is of critical importance for states as sales taxes comprise close to one-third of all state tax revenues and hundreds of billions of dollars in retail spending is now occurring online.

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Fact Sheet: Comparison of House GOP Tax Plan, Trump’s Initial Tax Proposal and Trump’s Revised Tax Proposal

November 15, 2016 • By ITEP Staff

Chart comparing House GOP Tax Plan, Trump's Initial Tax Proposal and Trump's Revised Tax Proposal.

Maine Center for Economic Policy: Moving Maine Students to the Head of the Class

November 1, 2016

“This November, Maine voters will consider a ballot initiative (Question 2) that rolls back recent tax breaks for the wealthy and dedicates this revenue toward additional state level resources for schools. The Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) examined the context for this initiative, its potential to promote tax fairness, and its capacity to improve […]

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The Short and Sweet on Taxing Soda

October 28, 2016 • By Carl Davis, Misha Hill

The concept of taxing sodas and other sugary beverages has gained traction recently across the United States and around the world. The World Health Organization officially recommended a tax on sugar sweetened beverages as a way to battle the obesity epidemic. In the US, multiple states and localities have looked to taxes on sugar sweetened beverages as a way to improve public health and increase revenue. In 2014, Berkeley, California became the first U.S. locality to enact such a tax. In 2016, similar taxes were enacted in Boulder, Colorado; Albany, Oakland, and San Francisco, California; Cook County, Illinois; and Philadelphia,…

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Cigarette Taxes: Issues and Options

October 18, 2016 • By Aidan Davis

Efforts to increase taxes usually face some opposition, particularly increases to broad-based taxes such as the sales or income tax. Yet in many states, lawmakers have been able to agree on one approach to revenue-raising: the cigarette tax. Since 2002, nearly every state has enacted a cigarette tax in-crease to fund health care, discourage smoking, or to help balance state budgets. This policy brief looks at the advantages and disadvantages of cigarette taxes, and cigarette tax increases, as a source of state and local revenue.

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State Tax Subsidies for Private K-12 Education

October 12, 2016 • By Carl Davis

This report explains the workings, and problems, with state-level tax subsidies for private K-12 education. It also discusses how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has exacerbated some of these problems by allowing taxpayers to claim federal charitable deductions even on private school contributions that were not truly charitable in nature. Finally, an appendix to this report provides additional detail on the specific K-12 private school tax subsidies made available by each state.

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Offshore Shell Games 2016

October 4, 2016 • By Matthew Gardner, Richard Phillips

This study explores how in 2015 Fortune 500 companies used tax haven subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes on much of their income. It reveals that tax haven use is now standard practice among the Fortune 500 and that a handful of the country's wealthiest corporations benefit the most from this tax avoidance scheme.

New Jersey Policy Perspectives: Transportation-Funding Deal Endangers New Jersey’s Future & Fails the ‘Tax Fairness’ Test

October 4, 2016

After a months-long stalemate, New Jersey’s three most powerful policymakers announced late last Friday that they’d come to an agreement on investing in the state’s transportation networks. As part of the deal, the leaders have agreed to a large-scale package of tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit well-off New Jerseyans while further decimating the state’s […]

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Comment Letter to FASB on Income Tax Disclosure

September 30, 2016 • By Richard Phillips

We appreciate the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) ongoing review of its accounting standards to ensure that financial statements are "facilitating clear communication of information that is important to financial statement users." Overall, the changes to disclosure requirements proposed by FASB in the exposure draft would represent a significant step forward toward providing users of financial statements the clarity that they need. We believe, however, that the exposure draft does not go far enough in providing the clarity needed and sought by investors and the public alike.

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State Tax Codes as Poverty Fighting Tools

September 15, 2016 • By Aidan Davis, Meg Wiehe

Despite this unlevel playing field states create for their poorest residents through existing policies, many state policymakers have proposed (and in some cases enacted) tax increases on the poor under the guise of "tax reform," often to finance tax cuts for their wealthiest residents and profitable corporations.

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Property Tax Circuit Breakers

September 14, 2016 • By Aidan Davis, Meg Wiehe

State lawmakers seeking to make residential property taxes more affordable have two broad options: across-the-board tax cuts for taxpayers at all income levels, such as a homestead exemption or a tax cap, and targeted tax breaks that are given only to particular groups of low- and middle-income taxpayers. One such targeted program to reduce property taxes is called a "circuit breaker" because it protects taxpayers from a property tax "overload" just like an electric circuit breaker: when a property tax bill exceeds a certain percentage of a taxpayer's income, the circuit breaker reduces property taxes in excess of this "overload"…