A growing group of state lawmakers are recognizing the extent to which low- and middle-income Americans are struggling and the ways in which their state and local tax systems can do more to ensure the economic security of their residents over the long run. To that end, lawmakers across the country have made strides in enacting, increasing, or expanding tax credits that benefit low- and middle-income families. Here is a summary of those changes and a celebration of those successes.

Members of Congress frequently claim they want to make it easier for working people to scrape together enough savings to have some financial security in retirement. But lawmakers’ preferred method to (ostensibly) achieve this goal is through tax breaks that have allowed the tech mogul Peter Thiel to avoid taxes on $5 billion. This is just one of the eye-popping revelations in the latest expose from ProPublica.

On July 15, the U.S. Treasury will begin mailing monthly checks to families with children who are eligible for the Child Tax Credit. Previously, the maximum credit was $2,000 per child, but for 2021, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan broadened the credit to $3,600 for each child under six and $3,000 for children over six. The expansion also made eligible children whose parents' incomes were too low to qualify for the previous credit, both addressing a fundamental policy flaw and taking a significant step to reduce child poverty. This is the first time that the federal government is sending advanced…

Like U.S. citizens, noncitizens who live, work, or invest in the United States must file local, state and federal taxes. But in order to file personal income taxes, they must first be issued a processing number called an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) by the IRS. These numbers are issued to both legal permanent residents and nonresidents who are not eligible for Social Security numbers. ITINs do not imply immigration status, nor can they be used for immigration enforcement purposes, but they can be used to create burdensome barriers that make it difficult for ITIN holders to file taxes and…

Nearly one in seven children in the United States live in poverty and about 6 percent of all children live in deep poverty. President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan would tackle child poverty in an immediate, meaningful way. It is expected to extend the one-year Child Tax Credit (CTC) enhancements included in the March 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) through 2025. Next year alone, this would provide around a $110 billion collective income boost to roughly 88 percent of children in the United States.

The agreement announced over the weekend from the finance leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) countries to allow governments to tax some corporate profits based on the location of sales and to implement a 15 percent global minimum tax is a major step forward—but in no way changes the need for Congress to enact President Joe Biden’s tax reforms right now.

The explosive ProPublica report released today confirmed what we have known for quite some time: the wealthy and powerful play by a different set of rules than the rest of us. Following is a statement by Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the report: “ProPublica’s reporting today on the details of how 25 billionaires pay little to nothing in federal tax relative to their incomes is a wakeup call: the nation needs tax reform that will impart some balance to our tax system."

Just as an early summer heatwave brought soaring temperatures this past weekend through much of the lower 48 states, several state legislative sessions are heating up as legislators scramble to make tough budget decisions. Massachusetts lawmakers are voting on a fiery new "millionaires' tax" that would support transportation and education revenue needs, and Connecticut will likely restore its state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) back to 30 percent. Illinois’s decision to cut back corporate tax breaks also provided a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, we'd give other state tax proposals a more lukewarm reception: New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio…

President Joe Biden’s 2022 budget proposal released today signals a commitment to transformational policy solutions that not only invest in people and communities but also ensure corporations and rich people contribute more in taxes to support the economy that makes their wealth and profits possible, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) said today.

As more and more state legislatures wrap up their sessions and we reflect on the whirlwind that is this past year, it’s easy to focus on the steps back that states like Oklahoma have taken and Nebraska, North Carolina, and Arizona are trying to take. We have had some significant wins in states over the course of the year, but not every development will be a good one. However, we know advocates are on the ground, working tirelessly to help states maintain equity and progressivity in their tax codes. And for that, we have many of you—our intrepid readers of…

The Treasury Department released a report explaining what the administration’s tax enforcement plan would do—and how it fits into the president’s overall plan to collect more revenue from profitable corporations and individuals making more than $400,000 a year.

President Biden’s American Families Plan includes revenue-raising proposals that would affect only very high-income taxpayers.[1] The two most prominent of these proposals would restore the top personal income tax rate to 39.6 percent and eliminate tax breaks related to capital gains for millionaires. As this report explains, these proposals would affect less than 1 percent of taxpayers and would be confined almost exclusively to the richest 1 percent of Americans. The plan includes other tax increases that would also target the very well-off and would make our tax system fairer. It would raise additional revenue by more effectively enforcing tax…

Emma Sifre joined ITEP in 2021. As a Senior Data Analyst, Emma supports ITEP’s microsimulation model and conducts research on the different effects of tax policy changes on race, income, and geography. Prior to joining ITEP, Emma researched domestic social policy at the Congressional Research Service.

Each year, corporations publicly state that some of the tax breaks they claim are unlikely to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities. And each year, corporations report that they will keep some of the dubious tax breaks they declared in previous years simply because the statute of limitations ran out before tax authorities made any conclusions. This suggests that, perhaps because of cuts to its enforcement budget, the IRS is not even investigating corporations that publicly announce they have claimed tax breaks that tax authorities would likely find illegal.