The gigantic Coronavirus-related tax and spending bill enacted last week, the so-called “CARES Act,” sets aside $17 billion in loans for “businesses critical to maintaining national security.” It’s generally understood that the bill’s authors want much, if not all, of this $17 billion to go to a single company: Boeing. So it behooves us to ask whether Boeing benefits America and its economy in ways that merit this largesse.
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blog April 1, 2020 Boeing “CARES” A Lot About its Shareholders—But What about the Rest of Us?
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blog April 1, 2020 Adding Flexibility to Make the EITC Work During the Pandemic
Temporarily modifying the structure of the EITC to reflect the realities of our current economy could provide a vital lifeline to low-income workers who have seen their incomes disappear during this crisis. What follows are a few such ideas which could be implemented at either the federal or state levels, or both.
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blog March 31, 2020 House Democrats’ Suggestion of Retroactively Repealing SALT Cap is a Poor Emergency Relief Measure
The House Democrats have plenty of ideas to help workers and families and boost the economy, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent idea to repeal the cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) is not one of them. The 2017 Trump-GOP tax law includes many provisions that should be repealed. Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats have long made it clear that they want to start by repealing the $10,000 cap on SALT deductions, which is one of the law’s few provisions that restrict tax breaks for the rich.
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blog March 31, 2020 Congress “CARES” for Wealthy with COVID-19 Tax Policy Provisions
At a time when record numbers of Americans are facing unemployment, state and local governments are facing a perfect storm of growing public investment needs and vanishing tax revenues, and small business owners are struggling to avoid even more layoffs, lavishing tax breaks on the top 1 percent in this way shouldn’t be in anyone’s top 20 list of needed tax changes.
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report March 25, 2020 Tax Rebates in the Federal CARES Act
Data available for download Congress passed and the president signed a $2 trillion plan that includes $150 billion in fiscal aid to states, $150 billion in health care spending, large… -
blog March 25, 2020 How the Tax Rebate in the Senate’s Bill Compares to Other Proposals
Congress is poised to pass a $2 trillion plan that includes $150 billion in fiscal aid to states, $150 billion in health care spending, large expansions of unemployment compensation and more. These measures are clearly needed as the economy teeters on the brink. As the Senate votes on its stimulus/COVID19 bill, one provision ITEP has deeper insights on is the payments to households in the form of tax rebates. ITEP has provided several analyses over the past few days showing that the rebate in the current bill is an improvement over a previous GOP proposal but still falls short of the benefits offered under Democratic proposals.
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news release March 25, 2020 New Analysis Shows Average Rebate for Families in the Stimulus Bill
The Senate agreed to a compromise stimulus bill last night that improves on flaws in its initial bill but still fails to go as far as other proposals and leaves out immigrants who file taxes via Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN), the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said today.
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blog March 24, 2020 COVID-19 and the Case for Race-Forward Economic Policy Prescriptions
Unconscious bias runs deep. Legislative proposals to assuage the exploding economic crisis are advancing and changing quickly, but initial GOP proposals are consistent with the nation’s long history of ostensibly race-neutral policies that are discriminatory in their outcomes.
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blog March 24, 2020 NEW ANALYSIS: House Democratic Stimulus Bill Explained
Breaking ITEP analysis explains how a newly-introduced House Democrats’ proposal—far more comprehensive and better targeted than the recently failed GOP Senate bill—combines overdue expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit with direct rebates to reach workers and families across all income groups.
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news release March 23, 2020 New Analysis: Revised GOP Stimulus Proposals Still Fails to Meet Critical Needs
Media Contact The revised GOP stimulus proposal still fails to do enough for struggling families while providing a no-strings-attached bailout to corporations, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said… -
blog March 23, 2020 New State-by-State Estimates: Modified Senate GOP Stimulus Bill Still Falls Short
The GOP Senate stimulus bill voted down yesterday is a slight improvement over the first GOP proposal released Thursday, but it still fails to prioritize workers and families or provide fast relief to those who need it most.
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blog March 20, 2020 Why the GOP Senate Bill Fails to Address the Crisis, and Why a Democratic Bill Looks More Promising
National and state-by-state data available for download By Steve Wamhoff and Meg Wiehe On Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a bill that reportedly cost more than $1… -
news release March 20, 2020 New Analysis Compares Republican- and Democratic-Sponsored Proposals to Help Families and Individuals
Media Contact The economic stimulus bill released by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday night would leave behind millions of adults and children and do little to help struggling families… -
blog March 18, 2020 It’s Time for Some State Fiscal Policy Triage
The COVID-19 novel coronavirus’s effects on public health and economies at all scales are creating a daunting situation for state budgets as well. Lawmakers can choose and prioritize their responses through a straightforward approach similar to that taken by health professionals: marshal and reinforce available resources, triage response options to prioritize the most vital services and most vulnerable people, and enact or strengthen the policies that will help address longer-term issues as well as immediate emergencies.
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blog March 17, 2020 Checks to All vs. Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut
A payroll tax cut would help those lucky enough to keep their job and would provide a bigger break to those with more earnings. Sending checks to every household would be a far more effective economic stimulus because it would immediately put money in the hands of everyone who would likely spend it right away, pumping it back into the economy.
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blog March 13, 2020 New ITEP Report on President’s Misguided Payroll Tax Proposal
Earlier this week, ITEP analyzed what would happen if Congress and the President repeated the 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax that was enacted for two years… -
report March 13, 2020 Trump’s Proposed Payroll Tax Elimination
President Trump has proposed to eliminate payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare through the end of the year. ITEP estimates that this would cost $843 billion and 65 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 20 percent of taxpayers, as illustrated in the table below.
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blog March 13, 2020 An Overload of Pie Graphs and Metaphors for Pi Day
For Pi Day, we’re doubling down on the pie metaphor to reiterate the compelling case for progressive tax policies to ensure more of us have an opportunity to share a slice of this nation’s economic pie.
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March 11, 2020 ITEP Testimony on the Illinois Earned Income Credit
Read as PDF Testimony of Lisa Christensen Gee, Director of Special Initiatives, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Submitted to: Illinois House Revenue Committee Chairman Zalewski, committee members—thank you for… -
blog March 10, 2020 Trump’s Proposed Payroll Tax Cut Is Not the Right Answer
The Trump administration is floating a cut in the Social Security payroll tax as a measure to counteract a potential economic downturn related to the COVID-19 virus. It should go without saying that a public health crisis requires government interventions that have nothing to do with taxes. But even if policymakers want to find ways to stimulate the economy beyond solving the health crisis, the payroll tax cut is not likely to be very effective.
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March 10, 2020 Illinois ITIN Impact
Impact of Including Illinois ITIN Filers in State & Federal EITCs Based on IRS 2015 ITIN Filer Counts and Current EITC Policy Notes: ITIN filer counts represent estimate of EITC… -
blog March 10, 2020 COVID-19 Is No Excuse for Airline Industry or Any Other Corporate Tax Cut
Trump administration officials have reportedly floated the idea of including tax breaks for the airline industry in its package of COVID-19-related stimulus proposals, which would allow airline companies to defer income taxes into the future. This is an odd policy choice since most of the biggest airlines are already using deferral to zero out most or all of their federal income taxes on billions of dollars in profits.
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blog March 10, 2020 Taxes in a Time of Coronavirus
Some problems can only be solved when public officials have the resources to act. Today’s public health crisis is that kind of problem. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s deep tax cuts leave our health infrastructure knee-capped, just when we need it most.
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blog March 10, 2020 State and Local Cannabis Tax Revenue Jumps 33%, Surpassing $1.9 Billion in 2019
Excise and sales taxes on cannabis raised more than $1.9 billion in 2019. This represents a jump of nearly half a billion dollars, or 33 percent, compared to a year earlier. These are the findings of an ITEP analysis of newly released tax revenue data from the eight states where legal sales of adult-use cannabis took place last year.
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blog March 6, 2020 Talking Taxes in Alaska
Alaska’s tax system underwent major changes in the 1970s when oil was found at Prudhoe Bay. Lawmakers repealed the state’s personal income tax (making Alaska the only state ever to do so) and began balancing the state’s budget primarily with oil tax and royalty revenue instead. But as oil prices and production levels have declined, a yawning gap has opened between state revenues and the cost of providing vital public services.