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ITEP Work in Action October 8, 2021 Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Proposed Cuts to the Top Tax Rate Are Costly and Heavily Favor the Rich
As the Arkansas Legislature concludes the 2021 general session, our attention must turn to the special session they are preparing to begin to discuss personal income tax cuts. Although income… -
ITEP Work in Action October 6, 2021 Georgia Budget and Policy Institute: How Georgia’s Tax Code Contributes to Racial and Economic Inequality
Today, state and local taxes consume a greater share of income earned by Georgians in poverty—who are more likely to be people of color—while the richest pay a far lower… -
blog October 4, 2021 State Income Tax Reform Can Bring Us Closer to Racial Equity
To pave the way for a more racially equitable future, states must move away from poorly designed, regressive policies that solidify the vast inequalities that exist today.
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report October 4, 2021 State Income Taxes and Racial Equity: Narrowing Racial Income and Wealth Gaps with State Personal Income Taxes
10 state personal income tax reforms that offer the most promising routes toward narrowing racial income and wealth gaps through the tax code.
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blog September 28, 2021 The Billionaires’ Income Tax Is the Latest Proposal to Reform How We Tax Capital Gains
When people first hear about proposals to tax unrealized capital gains, they often ask, “Is this income, and if so, should we tax it?” The answers to those questions are “yes” and “yes, when we are talking about the very rich.”
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blog September 28, 2021 Reforming Federal Capital Gains Taxes Would Benefit States, Too
Congress’s action or inaction on federal tax changes under consideration in the Build Back Better plan could have important implications for states on many fronts. One critical area of note is at the foundation of income tax law: setting the definition of income that most states will use in administering their own income taxes.
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ITEP Work in Action September 24, 2021 Florida Policy Institute: A Working Floridians Tax Rebate for a Stronger and More Equitable Florida
Floridians who are paid lower wages spend significantly more of their income on state and local taxes than those with high income. This is because the state lacks a personal… -
ITEP Work in Action September 24, 2021 The Commonwealth Institute: Tax Policy in Virginia
Black and Latinx people face tremendous barriers in areas like employment, education, and housing. These barriers include explicitly racist policies like school segregation as well as policies that appear “race-neutral”… -
report September 23, 2021 Repealing the SALT Cap Would Wipe Out Revenue Raised by the House Ways and Means Bill’s Income Tax Provisions
There are several ways that the House leadership could avoid this problem. One approach is for lawmakers to replace the SALT cap with a different kind of limit on tax breaks for the rich that actually raises revenue and avoids disfavoring some states compared to others as the SALT cap does. ITEP has suggested a way to do this.
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blog September 21, 2021 New ITEP Report Examines the Tax Changes in the House Ways and Means Build Back Better Bill
The vast majority of these tax increases would be paid by the richest 1 percent of Americans and foreign investors. The bill’s most significant tax cuts — expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — would more than offset the tax increases for the average taxpayer in all income groups except for the richest 5 percent.
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report September 21, 2021 Tax Changes in the House Ways and Means Committee Build Back Better Bill
This report finds that the vast majority of these tax increases would be paid by the richest 1 percent of Americans and foreign investors. The bill’s most significant tax cuts — expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — would more than offset the tax increases for the average taxpayer in all income groups except for the richest 5 percent.
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report September 17, 2021 Why Congress Should Reform the Federal Corporate Income Tax
It is reasonable for corporations (and, indirectly, their shareholders) to pay taxes to support the government investments that make their profits possible, such as the highways that facilitate the movement of goods and people, the education and health care systems that provide a productive workforce, the legal system and the protection of property, all of which are vital to commerce. Corporate tax avoidance allows wealthy and powerful individuals to reap enormous benefits from these investments without contributing their fair share to support them.
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blog September 15, 2021 House Ways and Means Provisions to Raise Revenue Would Significantly Improve Our Tax System But Fall Short of the President’s Plan
High-income people and corporations would pay more than they do today, which is a monumental change. But some wealthy billionaires like Jeff Bezos would continue to pay an effective rate of zero percent on most of their income, and American corporations would still have some incentives to shift profits offshore.
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blog September 14, 2021 New Census Data Highlight Need for Permanent Child Tax Credit Expansion
The status quo was a choice, but the Census data released today shows that different policy choices can create drastically different outcomes for children and families. It is time for our state and federal legislators to put people first when it comes to recovery.
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blog September 13, 2021 A Data-Driven Case for the CTC Expansion in the Ways & Means Committee’s Recent Proposal
The move toward permanent full refundability and inclusion of all immigrant children are crucial components of the future of the CTC. Together they will help ensure that the credit reaches the children most in need, making a vital dent in our nation’s unacceptably high rate of child poverty.
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blog September 13, 2021 Extending Federal EITC Enhancements Would Bolster the Effects of State-Level Credits
The EITC expansion targets workers without children in the home. In 2022 it would provide a $12.4 billion boost, benefiting 19.5 million workers who on average would receive an income boost of $730 dollars.
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ITEP Work in Action September 9, 2021 Wisconsin Budget Project: Wisconsin’s Billion-Dollar Tax Cut Leaves out a Huge Chunk of Households
Shutting low-income families out of the tax cut will further skew Wisconsin’s tax system, which already requires people with low incomes to pay a higher share of their incomes in… -
blog September 3, 2021 Frequently Asked Questions about Proposals to Repeal the Cap on Federal Tax Deductions for State and Local Taxes (SALT)
Even though Democrats in Congress uniformly opposed the TCJA because its benefits went predominately to the rich, many Democratic lawmakers now want to give a tax cut to the rich by repealing the cap on SALT deductions.
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blog August 27, 2021 Millionaire Sounds Off on Calls to Lift SALT Deduction Cap
We asked New York state resident Morris Pearl, former Blackrock executive and current chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a few questions to hear straight from the mouth of a millionaire how the SALT cap and its proposed repeal would affect his life.
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report August 26, 2021 Options to Reduce the Revenue Loss from Adjusting the SALT Cap
If lawmakers are unwilling to replace the SALT cap with a new limit on tax breaks that raises revenue, then any modification they make to the cap in the current environment will lose revenue and make the federal tax code less progressive. Given this, lawmakers should choose a policy option that loses as little revenue as possible and that does the smallest amount of damage possible to the progressivity of the federal tax code.
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brief August 25, 2021 The One Thing Missing From the Qualified Business Income Deduction Conversation: Racial Equity
When crafting tax policy, lawmakers and bill authors often work backward, using a patchwork of changes to help achieve their stated goal. One important consideration that is routinely left out is what impact the change will have on racial equity. Such is the case with the qualified business income deduction, which is helping to further enrich wealthy business owners, the overwhelming majority of whom are white. At present, white Americans own 88 percent of private business wealth despite making up only 60 percent of the population. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic families confronting much higher barriers to entrepreneurship each own less than 2 percent, despite making up 13 percent and 19 percent of the population, respectively.
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blog August 25, 2021 Eliminating the State Income Tax Would Wreak Havoc on Mississippi
History has repeatedly shown that such policies harm state economies, dismantle basic public services, and exacerbate tax inequities.
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ITEP Work in Action August 17, 2021 One Voice: Who Pays, Mississippi? An Overview of State Tax Policy and Racial Equity Impacts
Historic and current injustices, both in public policy and in society more broadly, have resulted in vast disparities in income across race and ethnicity in Mississippi. State and local tax… -
ITEP Work in Action August 10, 2021 North Carolina Policy Watch: NC House Tax Plan Isn’t Good for Our State (And These Graphs Explain Why This Is the Case)
The House tax plan would deliver the greatest share of the net tax cut to the richest North Carolinians. Fifty-six percent of the net tax cut would go to the… -
blog August 6, 2021 State Experimentation with Sales Tax Holidays Magnifies Their Flaws
It’s back-to-school shopping season, so…everyone who buys a cell phone in Arkansas this weekend will do so sales-tax-free. For this whole week in Connecticut, and for the entire spring in New Mexico, the corporate owners of highly profitable multinational restaurant chains had the option to pocket their customers’ taxes rather than remit them to the state to fund vital public services, pass along those savings to their customers, or give a much-needed boost to their employees. And all told, about $550 million of state and local revenue will be forgone in 17 states this year through wasteful and poorly targeted sales tax holidays.