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 23, 2020 New State-by-State Estimates: Modified Senate GOP Stimulus Bill Still Falls Short
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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.
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March 4, 2020 ITEP Testimony Regarding Connecticut Senate Bill 16, An Act Concerning the Adult Use of Cannabis
This testimony explains the advantages of the cannabis tax structure proposed in Connecticut’s Senate Bill 16 and offers additional background information as well as ideas for potential changes to the bill.
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blog March 2, 2020 The Latest Wildly Misleading Argument Against Taxing the Rich
Anti-tax activists’ convoluted claims that the rich pay too much in taxes broke new ground with an op-ed published last week in the Wall Street Journal. Penned by former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and John Early, a former official of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the piece is particularly misleading. The so-called evidence in support of their argument against raising taxes on the rich fails to correctly calculate effective tax rates.
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ITEP Work in Action March 2, 2020 West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy: House Income Tax Plan Benefits Wealthy and Could Punch Large Holes in State Budget
Once the fund reaches “an amount equal to or exceeding 2.5 times the total net reduction in personal income tax revenue collections that would have been received in that fiscal… -
ITEP Work in Action February 28, 2020 Chicago Resilient Families Task Force: EITC Expansion and Modernization
Expanding and modernizing the Earned Income Tax Credit will put more money back in the pockets of the people who need it most. Recent polling suggests such policies would be… -
blog February 26, 2020 Federal Inaction on the Gas Tax is Costing Us Dearly
Lawmakers should keep in mind that transportation funding woes can be traced to the federal government’s extremely outdated gas tax rate, which has not been raised in more than 26 years—not even to keep up with inflation.
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blog February 21, 2020 Tax Cuts Floated by White House Advisors Are an Attempt to Deflect from TCJA’s Failings
Now that multiple data points reveal the current administration, which promised to look out for the common man, is, in fact, presiding over an upward redistribution of wealth, the public is being treated to pasta policymaking in which advisors are conducting informal public opinion polling by throwing tax-cut ideas against the wall to see if any stick. But the intent behind these ideas is as transparent as a glass noodle.
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ITEP Work in Action February 21, 2020 Commonwealth Institute: State Funding Proposals Include Regressive Tax Increases – Many without Offsets
Although many significant state (Virginia) tax policy bills filed for this year did not move beyond the committee level, several proposals remain under consideration. A large transportation funding package (HB… -
ITEP Work in Action February 20, 2020 Hawai’i Budget and Policy Center: Hawai’i’s Earned Income Tax Credit: Next Steps
In 2017, Hawaiʻi passed legislation to create a state EITC.11 The new law allowed qualified taxpayers to claim a state tax credit beginning in 2018. The state tax credit amounts… -
blog February 19, 2020 How Democratic Presidential Candidates Would Raise Revenue
One of the biggest problems with the U.S. tax code in terms of fairness is that investment income, which mostly flows to the rich, is taxed less than the earned income that makes up all or almost all of the income that working people live on.
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ITEP Work in Action February 19, 2020 West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy: Senate Tax Plan a Bad Deal for West Virginia
Senate Republicans unveiled their latest proposal to eliminate the business personal property tax this week, passing the proposal out of the Senate Finance Committee. The plan, which builds upon an earlier…