All but a handful of 280 large, profitable corporations spent more money making their wealthy shareholders richer through dividends and stock buybacks than they paid in federal income taxes in the five years after the enactment of the Trump-GOP tax law, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness. And it wasn’t even close: altogether the stockholder payouts outstripped tax payments by 7-to-1, $4.4 trillion vs. $608 billion. This heavy bias towards shareholder payments for wealthy investors over tax payments for public services exacerbates economic inequality and promotes political instability, as increasingly frustrated American workers struggle to get by while wealthy stock investors surge ever further ahead. 

The U.S. safety net has grown significantly stronger for children and elderly adults over the past half century. However, the story is starkly different for non-elderly adults who are not raising children and do not receive Supplemental Security Income disability benefits or Social Security benefits, Robert Greenstein argues in his Hamilton Project paper. In 2017, this group numbered nearly 106 million people, or nearly 33 percent of the U.S. noninstitutionalized population.

Today the Legislature, in a special session called by the Governor, begins discussion of Senate Bill 1. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, this bill will eliminate at least $450 million in tax revenue every year from general revenue. This revenue is essential for services important to all Arkansans, such as education and health services. What’s more, this tax giveaway prevents strategic investment in our state to help all Arkansans thrive. We deserve investment from our elected officials, not a race to the bottom.

We found that black taxpayers who looked like their white counterparts in terms of these and other demographic factors paid higher taxes because the IRC favors certain behaviors and benefits that are closed to black people. For example, black people were then (and are now) less likely to receive valuable employer-provided tax benefits such as the opportunity to save for retirement tax-free, up to $50,000 of tax-free life insurance, and reimbursement for employee business expenses. A long history of federal government actions created and sustained redlining, making black people less likely to own homes and thus barred from receiving the home mortgage interest deduction and the deduction for state and local taxes, while also making it more difficult for black taxpayers to escape the standard deduction to get the benefit of other itemized deductions through IRS Form 1040 Schedule A. A long American history gave white people wealth while it made black people property, and so kept the benefits of the capital gains rate from Black taxpayers. The list of inequalities was extensive and, in the end, we inspired a generation of scholars to produce quantitative research on racial tax disparities.

When it comes to tax policy, Hawaiʻi’s 2024 legislative session was largely defined by a single bill—House Bill 2404. Signed into law as Act 046 by Governor Green on June 3, the bill enacts sweeping tax cuts for people of all income levels, but most of the benefit goes to those at the top of the income scale.

Thank you, Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the committee, for the invitation to participate in this important hearing. I am Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent center for research and action founded in 1963. I also co-edit the Institute’s Inequality.org web site.

The 2017 tax reform massively reshaped how U.S. multinationals are taxed on their foreign income, including through the application of a global minimum tax that grants corporations a substantial discount on their foreign profits. This discount gave big multinationals new incentives to stash their most valuable intangible assets – intellectual property like patents, trademarks, and other highly mobile properties – in foreign tax havens to avoid taxation at the full U.S. domestic rate. In an attempt to balance this perverse incentive, the 2017 law sought to bring investment back to the United States through a provision known as the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) deduction, a massive tax break for corporations that earn income from their U.S. intellectual property by selling goods and services abroad. 

Ohioans deserve an equitable tax system that supports the public goods and services that enable all of us to thrive. Unfortunately, that is not the system we have today. After two decades of tax handouts to corporations and the rich, our upside-down tax system increasingly perpetuates inequality while failing to adequately fund services like education and health care. This all pales in comparison to the extreme proposal from lawmakers that would eliminate the state’s personal income tax.

During this year’s legislative sessions, at least one in three states are considering or have enacted school voucher expansions alongside broad, untargeted property tax cuts. Over half of states have already enacted deep personal and corporate income tax cuts in the last three years. These policies will result in under-resourced public schools, worse student outcomes, and, over time, weaker communities.

Gov. Polis of Colorado signed the bill expanding its Child Tax Credit, which cites ITEP’s research on the second page of the bill text. Read the bill and its status.

The U.S. Federal and many State Governments provide social security tax deductions, either partial or all, for senior citizens. However, tax systems still require those whose incomes exceed standard deductions to report and calculate their income taxes. Usually, senior citizen’s income sources are from social security benefits, 401K retirement funds, IRA, annuities, pensions, and/or others. This paper provides a linear tax rate and tax formula to simplify federal and state social security and retirement taxes compared with the existing complicated tax calculation systems. This research also provides a reform proposal to combine all taxable incomes for qualified seniors who have certain retirement taxable incomes, such as less than $25,000 for Single Filers or $50,000 for Married Filing Jointly, and have no federal or state tax responsibilities. The numbers can be adjusted according to the tax revenue change after the tax reform. Senior citizens with more than standard deductions can simplify their tax returns. The benefits would include tax processing time and cost reductions for those qualified seniors and governments. It will comply with the goal of the IRS to make tax laws easier for senior citizens. In other words, the proposed method could achieve tax efficiency and optimal senior personal income taxation for federal and state governments, which may also be a good application for other countries.

According to the latest report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the Trump tax cuts for the next 10 years—as Republicans have proposed—would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit.