A comprehensive examination of Fortune 500 companies’ financial filings in 2018, the first year of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, finds that the law did nothing to curb corporate tax avoidance, with 91 companies paying $0 in taxes on U.S. income in 2018 and profitable companies overall paying a collective effective tax rate of 11.3 percent, which is barely more than half the 21 percent rate established by the tax law, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) said today.
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news release December 16, 2019 Fortune 500 Companies Avoided $73.9 Billion in Tax Under First Year of Trump Tax Law
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report December 16, 2019 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Year of the Trump Tax Law
Profitable Fortune 500 companies avoided $73.9 billion in taxes under the first year of the Trump-GOP tax law. The study includes financial filings by 379 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable in 2018; it excludes companies that reported a loss.
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media mention December 16, 2019 Washington Post: A New Report Hands Democrats a Major Weapon Against Trump
There is probably no more glaring example of President Trump’s massive betrayal of the economic populist nationalism that infused his campaign than the 2017 tax law. It isn’t just that… -
media mention December 12, 2019 NJ Spotlight: Pascrell, Other House Dems, Introduce Bill to Scrap Federal SALT Cap
For example, a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that 80% of the benefit of a SALT-cap repeal would go to just the top 5% of tax… -
blog December 12, 2019 New ITEP Reports Call for the Repeal of Opportunity Zones and Urge States to Decouple
Two new ITEP reports lay bare the irreparable flaws of the federal Opportunity Zones program, created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by President Trump in 2017.
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brief December 12, 2019 Opportunity Zones Bolster Investors’ Bottom Lines Rather than Economic or Racial Equity
This policy brief provides an overview of how opportunity zones are designed and highlights some of the flaws of the policy, including the detrimental impact opportunity zones have on communities of color.
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report December 12, 2019 States Should Decouple from Costly Federal Opportunity Zones and Reject Look-Alike Programs
Post enactment of TCJA, lawmakers in most states needed to decide how to respond to the creation of this new program. Given the shortcomings of the federal Opportunity Zones program and its added potential costs to states, the most prudent course of action is three-pronged: States should move quickly to decouple; states should reject look-alike programs; and lawmakers should make investments directly into economically distressed areas.
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blog December 11, 2019 House Democrats’ Latest Bill on SALT Deductions Would Mean Bigger Tax Cuts for the Rich
ITEP estimates show that if the House Democrats’ proposal was in effect in 2022, it would have a net cost of $81 billion in that year alone. The estimates also show that 51 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers in the U.S. Clearly, lawmakers concerned about the SALT cap need to go back to the drawing board.
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blog December 9, 2019 Legal Cannabis and a Tax Cut, Too
A new ITEP report explains that an income tax cut for cannabis businesses embedded in the MORE Act is probably larger than the new 5 percent sales tax. This means that the average cannabis retailer—and its customers—could expect to pay LESS tax if the MORE Act is signed into law. Congress might have good reasons for structuring legalization this way, but it is an underappreciated aspect of the bill that should be made clearer as this debate progresses.
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report December 9, 2019 Cannabis Legalization: Tax Cut or Tax Hike?
Understanding the full tax consequences of cannabis legalization requires evaluating not only the excise taxes proposed in most legalization bills, but also the effects on the federal income tax liability of cannabis businesses.
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media mention December 7, 2019 The News Tribune: Washington State Leaders Must Tax the Way to a Just Society
The inequalities in our state’s tax code are well known, and have gained us the ignoble designation of “the most unfair state and local tax system in the country.” This… -
media mention December 4, 2019 Beacon: New Ad Highlights Collins’ Vote to Pass Tax Break for Wealthy Corporations
Marking two years since Senator Susan Collins cast a key vote in support of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, the progressive 16 Counties Coalition launched a new ad on Monday highlighting corporations like Amazon and… -
media mention December 4, 2019 Fox Business: Biden to Unveil Tax Proposal Targeting Corporations, Wealthy
Under Biden’s plan, companies like Amazon, Netflix, General Motors, JetBlue and IBM, which reported net income of more than $100 million in the U.S. but paid zero or negative federal… -
December 2, 2019 Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act
Data available for download The Worker Relief and Credit Reform (WRCR) Act would replace the existing EITC. In most cases, the WRCR credit would be $4,000 for single people and… -
media mention November 26, 2019 The News Tribune: How Did Tacoma Do Under Trump Tax Cuts? You Can Calculate it for Yourself
President Donald Trump has said it’s time to consider another tax cut — as evidence mounts that wealthier taxpayers in the Tacoma area and around the nation benefited a lot… -
media mention November 26, 2019 CNBC: Blue States File Appeal in Legal Battle Over SALT Tax Deductions
Whether the final rule will ultimately deter people from donating to these funds remains to be seen. “If you’re really passionate about private school vouchers in Georgia, you donate and… -
blog November 25, 2019 A Lump of Coal for 12 States Not Collecting Marketplace Sales Taxes this Holiday Season
The last few years have brought major improvements in how states enforce their sales tax laws on purchases made over the Internet. Less than a decade ago, e-retailers almost never collected the sales taxes owed by their customers. The result was a multi-billion dollar drain on state coffers and a competitive disadvantage for local businesses. But this holiday season looks a bit different.
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media mention November 25, 2019 The Oracle: Big Corporate Tax Loopholes Strain Florida Budget
A 2019 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, for instance, examined data from the IRS and Congressional Budget Office, estimating that Florida loses $1.1 billion annually from… -
media mention November 25, 2019 Vanity Fair: “My Reserve Of F–Ks To Give Is Really Depleted”: How Teflon Tim Cook Gets Away With Enabling Donald Trump
Cook runs the biggest company on earth, with a current market cap of $1.16 trillion, and yet, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tax-policy think tank,… -
media mention November 24, 2019 Business Insider: From Amazon To GM, Here Are all the Major Tech and Transportation Companies who Avoided Federal Income Tax Expenses Last Year
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit think tank, analyzed SEC filings of Fortune 500 companies and identified 60 major corporations that didn’t report any federal income tax expenses in… -
media mention November 17, 2019 The New York Times: How FedEx Cut Its Tax Bill to $0
“Something like $1.5 billion in future taxes that they had promised to pay, just vanished,” said Matthew Gardner, an analyst at the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. “The… -
media mention November 15, 2019 Orlando Sentinel: As Florida Cuts Corporate Taxes, Your Tax Burden Rises … and Schools, Mental Health, Roads Suffer
Families that make less than $50,000 a year pay between 8.1% and 12.7% of their income in local and state taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,… -
media mention November 15, 2019 PolitiFact: Viral Post Says Democrats Spent $40 Million on Impeachment. That’s False
Tax policy experts told us they aren’t sure how much the impeachment inquiry has cost since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced it Sept. 24. “I can’t think of anyone who’s tried to calculate…