Racial justice requires tax justice. Economic justice requires tax justice. Climate and health justice require, yes, tax justice.

"Nearly one in eight households don't have enough to eat. Millions are at risk of eviction. State and local governments are facing revenue shortfalls of well more than $500 billion, leading to inevitable layoffs and cuts to critical services. Knowing that, the Republican Senate put forth a so-called skinny COVID relief package that failed to address these concerns. Too skimpy for this crisis, the bill failed as it should have."

Although the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has created a slew of problems, it is now clear that a mass migration of top earners out of higher-tax blue states is not one of them.

Reductions in critical state and local investments, including health care and education, would only exacerbate the economic crisis brought on by COVID-19 and worsen racial and income inequality for years to come. Higher taxes on top earners are among the best options for addressing pandemic-related state revenue shortfalls in the coming months.

Republicans continue to tout Opportunity Zones as their main vehicle to assist poor people, most recently with a deeply flawed report from President Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisors and a mention from Donald Trump Jr. in his opening night convention speech. The report purports to compare—as a way of cutting poverty—tax breaks for investors vs food, cash or health insurance coverage for struggling families.

On Aug. 13, President Trump pledged to cut the top federal income tax for capital gains to 15 percent. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that 99 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. This is unsurprising given that only those with taxable income of nearly half a million dollars are subject to a capital gains tax rate higher than 15 percent.

President Trump’s executive order that would supposedly allow workers to delay paying Social Security taxes, along with his related public statements, have created a situation that is bizarre even by 2020 standards.  

The biggest danger we face right now is that politicians will fail to get this health crisis under control and Americans will continue to die. The second biggest danger is that elected officials will fail to help families and communities, leading to foreclosures, evictions, and impoverishment—and also torpedoing the economy. With their inaction this week, the Senate seems determined to do both. Hold on everyone, we’re in for a sickening ride.  

An IRS regulation released last Friday sanctions a widely derided tax dodge that allows profitable businesses to avoid taxes by sending money to private and religious school voucher funds. It also leaves the door open to a brand of state and local tax (SALT) cap workaround that previously appeared to be on its way out.

The House Judiciary Committee last week held an antitrust hearing to scrutinize Amazon and other tech companies’ growing dominance. A look at the online retail giant’s new quarterly report and past tax avoidance reveals why lawmakers should be equally concerned about how the tax system allows dominant, profitable corporations to avoid most or all federal tax on their profits. Amazon, yet again, is poised to pay little or no federal income tax on its record profits, and it appears likely to do so using entirely legal tax breaks for stock options and research and development.

During the Great Recession, the most ambitious state revenue-raising efforts closed just 10 percent of shortfalls and most states relied heavily on federal aid and budget cuts to balance their budgets. Of course, states can and should turn to progressive revenue-raising options now, but as the pandemic rages on, the extent of this crisis will become too significant for states and localities to handle on their own. The federal government should step in to help.  

A large majority of Americans want corporations to pay more taxes and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has several proposals to achieve that. The newest idea is to require corporations to pay a minimum tax equal to 15 percent of profits they report to shareholders and to the public if this is less than what they pay under regular corporate tax rules. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal quotes several critics of the proposal, but none of their points are convincing.

Lawmakers in many states have enacted “sales tax holidays” (16 states will hold them in 2020) to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, school supplies, and other items. These holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, but their benefits are minimal while their downsides are significant—and amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy brief looks at sales tax holidays as a tax reduction device.

Sixteen U.S. states will hold “sales tax holidays” this year. As ITEP’s newly updated brief explains, these events offer dubious benefits at significant public expense even in normal years, problems which are only amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Americans are demanding policy that meets the needs of this urgent moment. There are now competing proposals from the U.S. House and Senate: One is a reasonable response to the staggering crisis we’re in. One is not.

After weeks of being in no particular hurry to assemble a new COVID-19 economic relief package, the Senate GOP has released its plan. It includes the “Supporting America’s Restaurant Workers Act,” which would allow business owners to write off 100 percent of the cost of their restaurant meals through the end of 2020. The two most obvious questions to ask about such a plan are “why” and “why now?” Republican lawmakers have not offered sensible responses to either because they have none.

The Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS) Act released by Senate Republicans Monday includes a tax rebate that is slightly more generous than the one provided under the March CARES Act, but fails to correct most of the earlier act’s problems. House Democrats addressed these shortcomings in the May HEROES Act, a better starting place for negotiations over the next round of COVID-19 relief. ITEP has analyzed both acts to provide a detailed comparison of how the tax rebate provisions would affect families across the income spectrum and by race. Both measures would provide cash payments to a…

In an explanation that can only be called richsplaining, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Thursday suggested that Congress’s delay in approving expanded unemployment benefits was no problem because banks would extend loans to people in the meantime.

Media contact Following is a statement by Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), regarding the pending Republican plan for phase IV COVID-19 relief. Details are emerging about the plan, which Senate leadership has not formally released. “Republicans are struggling to agree on the next round of COVID relief […]

On Tuesday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced a $775 billion proposal to expand care options for children and elderly people, suggesting that the cost would be at least partly offset by paring back tax breaks for real estate investors. Bigtime real estate investors are simply unaccustomed to operating without government subsidies provided through the tax code.

While the White House hasn’t clarified what it is proposing, we know that a payroll tax cut would not be well-targeted. In a new report, ITEP estimates the effects of suspending Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes for employees and employers from September 1 through the end of the year. We find that 64 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 20 percent of Americans while 24 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent.