Teachers in North Carolina and South Carolina are walking out and rallying this week for increased education funding, teacher and staff pay, and other improvements to benefit students—if you’re unsure why be sure to check out research on the teacher shortage and pay gap under “What We’re Reading” below. Meanwhile, budget debates have recently wrapped up in Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington. And major tax debates are kicking into high gear in both Louisiana and Nebraska.
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blog May 1, 2019 State Rundown 5/1: Teacher Uprisings Continue on May Day
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media mention May 1, 2019 Houston Chronicle: Under New Tax Code, Oil Companies Get Rebates, Not Bills
Despite earning billions of dollars in profits, companies such as the California oil major Chevron, the Houston independent oil companies Occidental Petroleum and EOG Resources, and the Houston oil field services company Halliburton were able to claim tens of millions in tax rebates, according to a study earlier this month by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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media mention May 1, 2019 Bloomberg: Gas Tax for Infrastructure Sparks Fears of Political Backlash
Some 30 states have raised their fuel taxes since 2003 — including Republican-led Ohio, Arkansas and Alabama this year — according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. States tack on an average tax of nearly 29 cents per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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media mention April 30, 2019 Pacific Standard: Can Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies Pay for Beto O’Rourke’s Climate Plan?
“The 2017 tax act, through its omission of true tax reform, really does leave a lot of opportunities available to Congress, starting in 2020, to broaden the tax base in a way that could raise a substantial amount of money,” says Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The Trump administration’s tax legislation, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, did little to close corporate tax breaks enjoyed by oil and gas and other industries, according to Gardner, “and in fact made some of the biggest tax breaks even bigger.”
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media mention April 30, 2019 Houston Chronicle: Oil Companies Dodge Tax Bills Under Trump Reforms, Study Says
Despite earning billions of dollars in profits, companies like Halliburton, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and EOG Resources were able to claim tens of millions in tax rebates, according to a study earlier this month by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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media mention April 30, 2019 MinnPost: Legislative Tax Plans: Equitable, Inspirational or Destructive?
Minnesota’s current tax system is considered one of the nation’s most progressive. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that assesses state and federal tax policies, ranks the state the fourth most-equitable in the way it taxes lower-income residents. It’s the provider tax and that proposed gas tax hike — two inherently regressive taxes — that drag down the overall progressivity of the plans.
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media mention April 30, 2019 New York Times: Apple Plans to Buy $75 Billion More of Its Own Stock
When it repatriated its cash under the new tax law, Apple paid $43 billion less than it would have under previous rates, bigger savings than any other American company, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group in Washington. Apple has also saved billions of dollars under the lower corporate tax rate. Apple says it is spending billions in the United States, hiring new workers, building data centers, expanding offices in Texas and investing in some outside manufacturers.
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media mention April 30, 2019 Washington Post: Democrats Said a GOP Tax Law Provision Would Devastate Blue States. That’s Not Happening.
“A lot of these claims were knee-jerk, political reactions,” said Carl Davis, a tax analyst for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank. “Some perspective is needed on some of the wild claims about how it would damage blue states’ economies.”
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media mention April 29, 2019 New York Times: Profitable Giants Like Amazon Pay $0 in Corporate Taxes. Some Voters Are Sick of It.
The list of profitable companies that pay no corporate taxes, compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, also includes Goodyear and three other Ohio companies, including the Akron-based electric utility FirstEnergy. The company, which has the naming rights to the Cleveland Browns’ stadium, paid no taxes last year on $1.5 billion in income, according to the analysis, and will receive additional tax credits that can be used in the future. In a win for consumers, some of that will be returned to the utility’s customers.
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ITEP Work in Action April 26, 2019 Connecticut Voices for Children: Testimony Supporting H.B. No. 7415
Smart state fiscal policies can play a critical role in building strong, equitable state economies. It is time we fix our tax laws to give working people and children a… -
April 26, 2019 ITEP Testimony Supporting H.B. No. 7415, An Act Concerning a Surcharge on Capital Gains
Comments are intended to offer some perspective on the broader tax policy context in which this proposal is being considered. We find that this proposal would help to lessen long-running inequities in Connecticut’s state and local tax law that have allowed high-income taxpayers to pay lower overall effective tax rates than most low- and middle-income families.
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blog April 26, 2019 State Rundown 4/26: Capital Gains Taxes Make Gains and Regressive Proposals Regress
Progressive capital gains tax proposals made news this week in Connecticut and Massachusetts, while Nebraskans came out in force to oppose a regressive tax shift, and North Carolina teachers prepare to rally over their legislature’s proclivity to cut taxes on wealthy households while underfunding schools.
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blog April 25, 2019 ICYMI: A Brief Summary of Our April Blogs and Reports
From the first comprehensive look at corporate filings under the 2017 tax law to bold policy options from analysts and researchers to dramatically reduce poverty, here’s a summary of reports that ITEP released this month.
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blog April 23, 2019 So-Called Opportunity Zones Provide Opportunity for Whom?
In early April, a diverse but mostly black crowd took to the streets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. to protest T-Mobile’s decision to order Metro PCS to cease playing gogo music. This tale is a shining example of why economic investment—especially taxpayer-incentivized investment—in underserved communities is fraught with controversy. Who ultimately benefits after developers pour millions of dollars into these communities? And, as this controversy reveals, are the usually black and brown denizens of these neighborhoods and businesses that may have catered to them no longer welcome once economic development reaches a critical mass?
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blog April 17, 2019 States Could Lift Millions of Children Out of Poverty by Enacting State-Level Child Tax Credits
In a new 50-state analysis, ITEP and the Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University teamed up to explain how state-level Child Tax Credits (CTCs) could lift between 2.1 and 4.5 million children out of poverty. The report outlines options that would help families who received little to no benefit from the expansion of the federal CTC included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
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report April 17, 2019 The Case for Extending State-Level Child Tax Credits to Those Left Out: A 50-State Analysis
As of 2017, 11.5 million children in the United States were living in poverty. A national, fully-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) would effectively address persistently high child poverty rates at the national and state levels. The federal CTC in its current form falls short of achieving this goal due to its earnings requirement and lack of full refundability. Fortunately, states have options to make state-level improvements in the absence of federal policy change. A state-level CTC is a tool that states can employ to remedy inequalities created by the current structure of the federal CTC. State-level CTCs would significantly reduce child poverty and deep poverty in all states while also addressing racial inequities that the current system has exacerbated. This report examines the poverty impacts, costs and beneficiaries of two options for a state-level CTC.
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news release April 17, 2019 New 50-State Analysis: State Child Tax Credits Would Lift 2.1 to 4.5 Million Children out of Poverty
Expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) at the state level could lift millions of children out of poverty and help families who benefited little or not at all from the 2017 federal expansion of the CTC, according to a 50-state report released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.
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ITEP Work in Action April 15, 2019 Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center: A Fair Share Tax Plan for Pennsylvania — 2019 Update
This paper puts forward the Fair Share Tax plan, a major step toward fixing Pennsylvania’s broken tax system and raising the revenues we need to invest in the public goods… -
ITEP Work in Action April 15, 2019 Michigan League for Public Policy: The Cost-of-Living Refund
The Cost-of-Living Refund is an enhanced and modernized version of our state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Michigan’s current EITC—at just 6% of the federal credit—provides a huge help to… -
blog April 12, 2019 $4.3 Billion in Rebates, Zero-Tax Bill for 60 Profitable Corps Directly Related to Loopholes
Meet the new corporate tax system, same as the old corporate tax system. That’s the inescapable conclusion of a new ITEP report assessing the taxpaying behavior of America’s most profitable corporations. The report, Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Law, released earlier this week, finds that 60 Fortune 500 corporations disclose paying zero in federal income taxes in 2018 despite enjoying large profits.
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report April 12, 2019 The Case For Progressive Revenue Policies
Income inequality is a national challenge. And inadequate federal revenue is a challenge that the nation will eventually have to reckon with. This chart book makes a strong case for why federal lawmakers should seriously consider progressive revenue-raising options.
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blog April 12, 2019 The IRS Could Calculate Taxes for the Vast Majority of Taxpayers—But a Bipartisan Measure Would Ban It
A proposal re-introduced this week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), The Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2019, goes a long way toward making tax filing a much more straight-forward process by broadening the IRS’s mandate.
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blog April 12, 2019 You Can’t Tax Stolen Land
The Montana Senate this week stopped a bill to restructure the state’s temporary tribal tax exemption program, making tribal governments the only sovereignties on which Montana levies a tax and making it more difficult for leaders to buy back illegally seized land. Still, the success of the bill in the House is troubling.
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report April 11, 2019 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2019?
For years, Americans have been told that the rich are paying a highly disproportionate share of the nation’s taxes. Claims to that effect often focus on just one tax, the federal personal income tax, which is indeed progressive overall. But when the nation’s tax system is viewed in its entirety, it becomes clear that the reality is very different. Despite their enormous incomes and wealth, the nation’s richest taxpayers are paying a share of overall taxes that slightly exceeds their share of income.
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news release April 11, 2019 60 Fortune 500 Companies Avoided All Federal Income Tax in 2018 Under New Tax Law
91 corporations did not pay federal income taxes on their 2018 U.S. income. Read the follow-up report released in December 2019, Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Year of the Trump…