February 10, 2020 • By ITEP Staff
Kamolika monitors trends in state tax policy and supports state researchers and advocates. She primarily focuses on the South and mid-Atlantic regions. Before joining the team in 2020, Kamolika promoted progressive affordable housing and workforce development policies at the local level in the District of Columbia.
February 10, 2020 • By ITEP Staff
Marco provides research and analysis to help support state policymakers across the country, including in many of the Great Plains states and Southwest. Prior to joining ITEP in 2020, Marco spent more than four years providing commentary and tracking state tax news as an associate editor with Tax Notes.
February 5, 2020 • By Carl Davis
Itemized deductions are problematic tax subsidies that need to close. The mortgage interest deduction, for instance, is often lauded as a way to help middle-class families afford homes and charitable deductions are touted as incentivizing gifts to charitable organizations. But the dirty little secret is that itemized deductions primarily benefit higher-income households while largely failing to achieve their purported goals.
February 5, 2020 • By Carl Davis
State itemized deductions are generally patterned after federal law, though nearly every state makes significant changes to the menu of deductions available or the extent to which those deductions are allowed. This report summarizes the key details of each state’s itemized deduction policies and discusses various options for reforming those deductions with a focus on lessening their regressive impact and reducing their cost to state budgets.
If President Trump puts forth another tax proposal this year, as he is hinting, it will be his third. The second round, already costing the U.S. Treasury billions, was implemented largely out of the public’s view.
February 4, 2020 • By Amy Hanauer
Presidential candidates and some elected officials are finally talking about bold tax policy ideas that would increase taxes and raise revenue. This is a dramatic shift from when a radical, right-wing narrative dominated the public debate. Republicans redefined “fiscal responsibility” as fewer taxes and less government, peddled supply-side economic theories, and denied the clear evidence that tax cuts were adding to our nation’s deficits.
January 31, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner
If we focus on the taxes the company paid in 2019, we see an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.2 percent. And since the company enjoyed federal income tax rebates in 2017 and 2018, this means that over the last three years Amazon has paid zero on $29 billion of U.S. pretax income.
January 31, 2020
Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) detail how the current system of state and local taxes in Massachusetts is regressive, largely because the state uses a flat income tax rate and relies heavily on sales taxes. The chart above shows how an increase in the gas tax would make Massachusetts taxes […]
January 31, 2020
State EITCs are better targeted to people with low income than blanket tax exemptions, so they help to reduce the disproportionate impact of sales and excise taxes. According to new data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a state EITC at 30 percent of the federal credit would reduce the share of income […]
January 30, 2020
How to untax groceries without costing education a dime It’s crucial to replace the grocery tax revenue without hurting the people who would benefit most from the tax’s elimination. Fortunately, Alabama has a way to untax groceries while protecting both struggling families and education funding. That solution would be to end an unusual tax loophole […]
A new IRS proposal could once again allow wealthy business owners to use state charitable tax credits–including tax credits for donating to support private and religious K-12 schools–to dodge the federal government’s $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
January 29, 2020 • By Carl Davis
Comments regarding the possibility that owners of passthrough businesses may be able to circumvent the $10,000 SALT deduction cap of section 164(b)(6) by recharacterizing the nondeductible portion of their state and local income tax payments as deductible expenses associated with carrying on a trade or business.
January 28, 2020
To get a sense of a state’s values, one often need look no further than its tax system. What a state spends its tax dollars on and how it acquires those tax dollars typically reveals a lot about the priorities of its people—what they care about and what they stand for. In theory, it’s a […]
January 28, 2020
The Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) is New Mexico’s equivalent of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The WFTC’s eligibility levels and credit amounts are based directly on the EITC, and like most states, the amount is a set percentage of the federal EITC. These tax credits reduce poverty, improve outcomes for children, and […]
January 28, 2020
While all families in Arizona help pay for health, education and public safety through state and local taxes, low-income and middle-income families pay a larger portion of their income in taxes than do wealthier families. When all types of state and local taxes are combined—income, sales, and property—families with income in the lowest 20 percent […]
January 26, 2020
In Search of State Budget That Creates Opportunity for All When all types of state and local taxes are combined—income, sales, and property—families with income in the lowest 20 percent pay twice what families in the top 1 percent do—$12.95 for every $100 of income and $8.49 for middle income families compared to $5.91 for […]
January 24, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner
Money doesn’t buy happiness—but it can buy immunity from the reach of Uncle Sam. The IRS is outgunned in cases against corporate giants because that’s how Republican leaders want it to be. They have systematically assaulted the agency’s enforcement capacity through decades of funding cuts. Instead of saving money, these cuts have cost billions: each dollar spent on the IRS results in several dollars of tax revenue collected.
On the COVID-19 health and economic crisis “The current disaster threatens our health and our economy. Ongoing crises stem from fast-accelerating climate change, skyrocketing inequality, and inadequate federal response to both. We as a country have the resources to address collective problems. But solving them requires that we pull together, raise taxes on those most […]
After years of watching tax policy increasingly leave communities behind, at ITEP I’ll have the chance to work with local, state and national partners on policy solutions. I’m prepared to push for a tax system that can better deliver economic, climate and racial justice; for a public sector that can prepare our kids and our grid for 2020 and beyond; and for an America that works for all of us, whether we were born in Nebraska or Hawaii, Detroit or Miami.
January 15, 2020
Connecticut Voices for Children released a report that examined the state’s income and wealth inequality and the state’s regressive tax system that exacerbates these inequalities.
January 15, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff
Americans have long wanted more progressive tax policies and have told pollsters for years that they want wealthy individuals and big corporations to pay more, not less, in taxes. The only way forward is for lawmakers and the next president to take a dramatically different approach to tax policy.
January 14, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner
When the White House Council of Economic Advisors last week tweeted that the poorest 50 percent of Americans’ wealth is growing 3 times faster than the wealth of the top 1 percent, we were skeptical. As it turns out, the CEA’s tweet is a reminder that the poorest 50 percent wealth grew twice as fast during Barack Obama’s second term than it has under Trump, but to this day remains far below its pre-recession share and significantly less than what it was 30 years ago.
A basic understanding and idea of fairness is a trait we share with intelligent primates, which is precisely why more than two years ago as Congress was debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the American public disapproved of the tax bill.
January 7, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner
President Trump and GOP lawmakers often cited corporations’ abuse of tax havens, e.g. shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes, as justification for dramatically lowering the federal corporate tax rate under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By 2016, corporations’ offshore cash haul had grown to $2.6 trillion, representing hundreds of billions in lost federal tax […]
January 7, 2020 • By ITEP Staff
Amy Hanauer provides vision and leadership to bring accurate research and data to tax policy conversations. As Director, Amy raises resources, guides strategy, and works with the board and staff to make ITEP a critical part of the policy discussion around a stronger tax code. She brings nearly 30 years of experience working to create economic policy that advances social justice.