Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Connecticut Mirror: Could CT Fight Homelessness With a ‘Mansion Tax’? Yes, Report Says

July 3, 2024

State government could raise as much as $180 million annually to combat homelessness or address other social needs by boosting its tax on the sale of high-value houses, according to a recent report from two Washington fiscal think tanks.

The Volcker Alliance: Benefit or Burden

July 3, 2024

The issue paper addresses how US states hand out massive tax breaks every year to advance policy goals, such as aiding low-income families, spurring business investment and job creation, or mirroring the federal tax code. Known broadly as tax expenditures, these exemptions, credits, abatements, and other measures reduce state revenues by an estimated $1 trillion a year, almost three times their 2021 total state expenditures on education. Such tax expenditures, which often suffer from lax government oversight, may be leaving states short on revenue at time when the effects of climate change and the cost of deferred maintenance means that…

The Globalist: Will American Monetocracy Ever Come to an End?

July 3, 2024

It used to be that the United States prided itself on being a meritocracy. No more. It is increasingly a country with a cult of money and rule by moneyed elites. Not so much an oligarchy as a monetocracy.

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Tax the Wealthy and Reject Austerity for a More Just and Thriving Democracy

July 1, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer

Two of the last five presidents won office over the objection of the majority of the people; California, with 65 times more people, has the same voting power in the U.S Senate as Wyoming; and the U.S. Supreme Court just permitted South Carolina lawmakers to dilute Black votes in drawing districts. These obvious flaws undermine our claim to be a strong democracy. One less appreciated but similarly undemocratic trend is our extreme inequality that supercharges the power and wealth of corporations and the uber-rich, weakens what the public sector can deliver, and often feeds on itself.

New York Times: Newsom Uses Annual State Address to Confront Republicans Across the Nation

June 27, 2024

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, whose liberal state has been hammered by Republicans for months as a hellscape of homelessness, crime and high taxes, used his annual State of the State address on Tuesday to slam “conservatives and delusional California bashers” and defend “the California way of life.”

U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions: By the Wealthy, for the Wealthy: The Coordinated Attacks on Public Education in the United States

June 26, 2024

Public education is the cornerstone of opportunity in the United States. No matter who they are, where they live, or how much money their parents make, every child in this nation has a fundamental right to a public education. But in America today, the public education system—one of the cornerstones of democracy—is under attack.

Americans for Tax Fairness: Engine of Inequality: A Flood of Corporate Profits Is Enriching Wealthy Shareholders Through Stock Buybacks and Dividends, At The Expense of Workers and The Public

June 26, 2024

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…

Sacramento Bee: Governor Gavin Newsom Claims California Is Not a ‘High-Tax State.’ Is He Correct?

June 26, 2024

“Here’s the truth Republicans never tell you: California is not a high tax state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Tuesday in his taped State of the State address.

Education Week: Some Districts Charge for School Bus Rides—If They Offer Transportation at All

June 26, 2024

A small but notable share of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts charge fees for some or all of their students to ride the bus each day—if they provide transportation at all. States vary on the degree to which they require schools to offer bus service to all students who want it. They also differ widely on how much money they provide to schools to cover the growing costs of transportation.

New York Times: Democrats’ Dream of a Wealth Tax Is Alive. For Now.

June 21, 2024

For years, liberal Democrats have agitated for the United States to tax wealth, not just income, as a way to ensure that rich Americans who derive wealth from real estate, stocks, bonds and other assets were paying more in taxes. On Thursday, that dream survived a Supreme Court scare, but just barely.

Forbes: Supreme Court Refuses to Upend the Tax Code in Ruling on Unrealized Gains

June 21, 2024

The Supreme Court declined to overturn a tax policy Thursday that critics warned could have had broad implications on federal tax policy and the U.S. economy, ruling against a couple who claimed they should not have been taxed on money they invested but hadn't made a profit on.

The Hamilton Project: The Austere US Safety Net for Poor, Non-Elderly Adults Who Are Not Raising Children and Do Not Receive Disability Benefits

June 20, 2024

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.

Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families: The Definition of Regressive

June 20, 2024

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.

Pluribus News: The Volatility of Taxing the Rich

June 20, 2024

State leaders in Massachusetts and Washington are learning it’s hard to predict how much money their taxes on millionaires and billionaires will rake in.

Roosevelt Institute: When Tax Policy Discriminates: The TCJA’s Impact on Black Taxpayers

June 18, 2024

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…

Marketplace: Closing a $50 Billion Tax Loophole for the Wealthy

June 18, 2024

The Treasury and IRS announced a new initiative Monday to close a tax loophole for wealthy people that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade. Plus, the evolving economics of "gayborhoods" in U.S. cities.

NPR: Kansas Lawmakers Will Consider Tax Cuts During Their Special Session

June 18, 2024

Kansas' Republican-led Legislature is pushing for tax cuts. But critics worry about repeating the failed tax cuts from 2012 that blew holes in the state’s budgets for years.

The American Prospect: Taming the Price Beast

June 14, 2024

A February paper from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that studied 342 profitable corporations found that these companies paid an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, well below the historically low statutory rate of 21 percent signed into law by the Trump administration in 2017. At the same time, we have seen record corporate profits since 2021, culminating in an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2023. Companies seek out excess profits in increasingly harmful ways, because they get to keep more of those excess profits.

Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice: Hawaiʻi’s Elected Leaders Again Buy-In to Costly “Trickle-Down” Myth

June 14, 2024

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.

The Guardian: ‘Perilous for Democracy, Good for Profits’: Is Big Business Ready to Love Trump Again?

June 13, 2024

Chief executives of some of America’s largest companies will meet privately with Donald Trump later on Thursday, and many CEOs who were once critical of his unprecedented conduct appear increasingly open to the former president’s return to office, a Guardian analysis has found.

Institute for Policy Studies: A Fair Tax Agenda for Wall Street

June 13, 2024

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 FACT Coalition: FACT Sheet: Congress Should Repeal a Wasteful Tax Break for Big Tech

June 11, 2024

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…

Yahoo Finance: 7 Places Your Taxes Will Go if Trump Wins in 2024

June 11, 2024

If you are subject to estate taxes under a second Trump term, you can expect to keep paying the historically low rate he set in motion during his first term. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only eight of every 10,000 people who died left an estate large enough to trigger the tax as of 2019, the most recent year data are available. Most of the estate tax is paid by estates worth more than $20 million, and in recent years the majority has been paid by estates worth more than $50 million.

Policy Matters Ohio: Income Tax Extremism Is a Gift to the Wealthy. Repairing the Damage Would Cost Us All

June 7, 2024

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.

Capital & Main: The Return of Trickle-Down Economics

June 6, 2024

The return of trickle-down economics — the much-criticized theory that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy eventually result in job growth and higher wages for the middle class and working class — has inspired a fierce debate in the Kansas Legislature that has gone on for months. A bill that included a flat 5.25% personal income tax, an 8% reduction from the current rate for top earners, was approved by Republicans in both chambers, though critics say it would disproportionately benefit the wealthy in the state. The top 20% of earners in Kansas — those with average annual incomes above…