Circuit breaker credits are the most effective tool available to promote property tax affordability. These policies prevent a property tax “overload” by crediting back property taxes that go beyond a certain share of income. Circuit breakers intervene to ensure that property taxes do not swallow up an unreasonable portion of qualifying households’ budgets.

Congress absolutely should raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to generate revenue and improve the fairness of our tax code. President Biden has several proposals to do exactly that. But this is an entirely separate question from whether we should raise the debt ceiling to honor the debts the nation has already incurred and avoid an economic apocalypse.

The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.

Kansas lawmakers failed to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a damaging flat tax package. In doing so, the state narrowly avoided traveling again down the same disastrous yet well-worn path of deep income tax cuts. States across the country can learn from Kansas’s experience by rethinking tax policy decisions and broader statewide priorities.

Twenty states have legalized the sale of cannabis for general adult use. Cannabis taxes vary considerably depending on local authority. Some states allow local governments to levy standalone excise taxes applying narrowly to cannabis purchases. Most local excise taxes on cannabis are levied in states that do not permit local governments to levy general sales taxes.

Twenty states have legalized cannabis sales for general adult use. Every state allowing legal sales applies a cannabis tax based on the product’s quantity, its price, or both. ITEP research indicates that taxes based on quantity will be more sustainable over time because prices are widely expected to fall as the cannabis industry matures.

This year millions of American families are finding that their refunds are much smaller than last year—or that they even owe taxes back to the government—because of the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit that were in effect in 2021. The lapse of the expanded credits affects a majority of the middle class, but lower-income households are particularly likely to feel the sting.

When state budgets are strong, lawmakers should put those revenues toward building a stronger and more inclusive society for the long haul. Yet, many state lawmakers have made clear that their top priority is repeatedly cutting taxes for the wealthy.

As Tax Day approaches, it’s worth thinking about not only the taxes that we individually pay but the overall condition of our tax code as well. State tax codes, while perhaps less discussed than the federal system, are critically important. Depending on how they are designed, state taxes can improve or worsen economic and racial […]

Every state with a personal income tax offers tax subsidies for seniors that are unavailable to younger taxpayers. The best academic research suggests that the median state asks senior citizens to pay about one-third less in personal income tax than younger families with similar incomes. The majority of these subsidies are costly and poorly targeted. […]

Most local tax systems are falling short of their potential. Well-structured local tax policies support communities by facilitating important investments and advancing fairness, but the tax revenue sources most utilized by local governments tend to disproportionately weigh on households with fewer resources. Learning from these realities can inform the path to improved tax policies and stronger communities.

As nature bursts into life and color with the arrival of spring, state tax proposals are doing the same as the legislative seeds planted by lawmakers earlier this year start to grow, blossom, and in some cases rot. However, some governors are not entirely happy with what state lawmakers have produced.

Under a well-designed income tax based on ability to pay, it is simply not necessary to offer special tax subsidies to older adults but not younger families. At the end of the day, your income tax bill should depend on what you can afford to pay, not the year you were born. It’s really as simple as that.

State governments provide a wide array of tax subsidies to their older residents. But too many of these carveouts focus on predominately wealthy and white seniors, all while the cost climbs.

President Biden’s latest budget proposal includes trillions of dollars of new revenue that would be paid by the richest Americans, both directly through increases in personal income, Medicare and estate taxes, and indirectly through increases in corporate income taxes.

As part of his new budget plan, President Biden is asking the richest Americans to pay a little bit more to strengthen Medicare. The proposal includes raising taxes related to Medicare very slightly for the highest earners and closing a loophole that some wealthy individuals use to avoid Medicare taxes altogether.

In recent years, lawmakers have been quick to push for phased-in tax cuts or cuts attached to trigger mechanisms. These policy tools push the implementation of tax cuts outside of the current budget window with a predetermined phase-in schedule or a mathematical formula tied to state revenue trends.

Wealthy families are overwhelmingly the ones using school voucher tax credits to opt out of paying for public education and other public services and to redirect their tax dollars to private and religious institutions instead. Most of these credits are being claimed by families with incomes over $200,000.

A higher tax on stock buybacks would reduce the tax disparity between dividends and buybacks, raise more revenue for productive public investments, and recoup some of Trump's corporate tax cuts that went to wealthy shareholders.

A higher excise tax rate on buybacks is completely reasonable. Quadrupling the rate, as the President proposes, would raise more revenue and cut into the tax advantage buybacks have over dividends. When a company uses their cash holdings to repurchase their own stock, it is an admission that they have few productive investment opportunities. The public does have productive uses for the tax revenue like infrastructure and schools that create value for the entire economy.

Black households are between 2.9 and 4.7 times more likely to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service than non-Black households. This disparity is driven in part but not wholly by a lack of resources at the IRS, which itself is driven by years of budget cuts the agency has faced.

Despite mixed economic signals for 2023, including a possible recession, many state lawmakers plan to use temporary budget surpluses to forge ahead with permanent, regressive tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of low- and middle-income households. These cuts would put state finances in a precarious position and further erode public investments in education, transportation and health, all of which are crucial for creating inclusive, vibrant communities where everyone, not just the rich, can achieve economic security and thrive. In the event of an economic downturn, these results would be accelerated and amplified.

Refundable tax credits are an important tool for improving family economic security and advancing racial equity, and there is incredible momentum heading into 2023 to boost two key state credits: the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A new report from the National Taxpayer Advocate – part of an independent oversight arm inside the IRS – found that the agency struggled in 2022 with timely processing of tax returns and refunds, responding to taxpayer correspondence quickly, and answering phone calls. It expects these issues to improve in 2023, thanks in part to the influx of $80 billion in new funding from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which the Advocate’s office calls a “gamechanger” for Americans.