While President Trump and Republicans in Congress heralded the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 as a major tax cut for the middle class, the numbers don’t bear that out. A new analysis by researchers at Prosperity Now and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reveals just how much of the federal tax cut benefits went to the highest income earners, and the crumbs that were left over for low and middle-class households.
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ITEP Work in Action October 12, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Federal Tax Cut Worsening Racial Wealth Divide
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media mention October 12, 2018 The Guardian: I’m Undocumented. It’s Time to Reveal What That Actually Means
Nationwide, the amount of taxes that the Internal Revenue Service collects from undocumented workers ranges from almost $2.2m in Montana, which has an estimated undocumented population of 4,000, to more than $3.1bn in California, which is home to more than 3 million undocumented immigrants. According to the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8% of their incomes in state and local taxes on average. To put that in perspective, the top 1% of taxpayers pay an average nationwide effective tax rate of just 5.4%.
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media mention October 11, 2018 TalkPoverty: North Carolina Legislators Want to Add Tax Breaks for the Rich to the State Constitution
“Since 2012, when Republicans took full control of the legislature and governorship for the first time in modern history, they’ve been on a tax cutting rampage,” said Meg Wiehe, a North Carolina native and deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The state will be about $3.6 billion shorter in revenue than it would have been otherwise, which is a pretty significant difference in a state with a general fund of just around $21 billion.”
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media mention October 11, 2018 Law360: TCJA Increases Racial, Economic Tax Divides, Report Says
The recent federal tax overhaul disproportionately benefits white households over households of color, increasing the wealth gap not just along income lines but along racial lines as well, according to a…
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media mention October 11, 2018 New York Times: White Americans Gain the Most From Trump’s Tax Cuts, a Report Finds
The tax cuts that President Trump signed into law last year are disproportionately helping white Americans over African-Americans and Latinos, a disparity that reflects longstanding racial economic inequality in the United States and the choices that Republicans made in crafting the law.
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report October 11, 2018 ITEP Comments and Recommendations on Proposed Section 170 Regulation (REG-112176-18)
The IRS recently proposed a commonsense improvement to the federal charitable deduction. If finalized, the regulation would prevent not just the newest workarounds to the $10,000 deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), but also a longer-running tax shelter abused by wealthy donors to private K-12 school voucher programs. ITEP has submitted official comments outlining four key recommendations related to the proposed regulation.
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report October 11, 2018 Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide
A newly released report by Prosperity Now and the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy, Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide, finds that the TCJA not only adds unnecessary fuel to the growing problem of overall economic inequality, but also supercharges an already massive racial wealth divide to an alarming extent.
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blog October 10, 2018 ‘Financial Exposure’ Showcases Tax Misconduct by Powerful Individuals and Corporations
Elise J. Bean’s Financial Exposure reiterates the point that tax avoidance and tax evasion were endemic to our financial system long before allegations against a sitting president brought them to the forefront of the public consciousness.
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media mention October 5, 2018 NPR: It’s Been 25 Years Since The Federal Gas Tax Went Up
Yet over those 25 years, the cost of building and maintaining roads, bridges and transit has shot up, leaving the highway trust fund, which pays the federal portion of highway and transit projects, running on empty.
“The whole reason this tax exists is to keep our roads paved and to keep our bridges from falling down,” says Davis. “And to do that effectively, it needs to collect a sustainable amount of revenue over time to cover the cost of paving roads and maintaining bridges, and it can’t do that if it’s just not updated for decades at a time.”
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October 5, 2018 Concerned about Trump-family tax gaming? His law may prompt others to dodge.
“The IRS is wildly outgunned,” says Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank in Washington. “You can’t keep cutting IRS funding and not expect more things like what The New York Times wrote about the Trumps. That’s bound to happen even more now.”
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media mention October 4, 2018 Washington Post: How big developers like Trump benefit from web of tax breaks
[Real estate investors] can fall behind on their debts and still face fewer tax penalties for having the debt forgiven than other kinds of investors, according to Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Trump took advantage of that, Wamhoff says, when he couldn’t repay debts on his Atlantic City casinos in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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news release October 2, 2018 NYT Expose on Trump Family Tax Avoidance Demonstrates There’s a Different Set of Rules for the Rich and Powerful
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding an expose in today’s New York Times that reveals Donald Trump’s family engaged in complex schemes to avoid taxes.
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blog October 2, 2018 Twelve States Offer Profitable Tax Shelter to Private School Voucher Donors; IRS Proposal Could Fix This
A proposed IRS regulation would eliminate a tax shelter for private school donors in twelve states by making a commonsense improvement to the federal tax deduction for charitable gifts. For years, some affluent taxpayers who donate to private K-12 school voucher programs have managed to turn a profit by claiming state tax credits and federal tax deductions that, taken together, are worth more than the amount donated. This practice could soon come to an end under the IRS’s broader goal of ending misuse of the charitable deduction by people seeking to dodge the federal SALT deduction cap.
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ITEP Work in Action September 28, 2018 BTC Report: Income tax rate cap amendment is costly for taxpayers, communities
Imposing an arbitrary income tax cap in the North Carolina Constitution could fundamentally compromise our state’s ability to fund our schools, roads, and public health, as well as raise the cost of borrowing. This could all happen even as the tax load shifts even further onto middle- and low-income taxpayers and the state’s highest income taxpayers — the top 1 percent — continue to benefit from recent tax changes since 2013.
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news release September 28, 2018 U.S. House Advances More Unpopular Tax Cuts That Primarily Benefit the Wealthy
The U.S. House this week voted on so-called Tax Cuts 2.0, a package of three tax bills that, among other things, would make permanent temporary provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Alan Essig, ITEP’s executive director, said the following: “While top-heavy tax cuts and their inevitable effect of decimating public investments may seem peripheral to today’s news cycle, they are emblematic of the governing philosophy of those in power today.”
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September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 Resources
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. GOP leaders wrote the bill this way to adhere to their own rule that limits how much a piece of legislation can add to the federal debt. But it’s clear that proponents planned all along to make those provisions permanent. Less than a month after the law passed, the White House and Republican leaders began calling for a second round of tax cuts. Now, they have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. And they falsely claim that making these provisions permanent will benefit the middle class.
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September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Alaska
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Alabama
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Arizona
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Arkansas
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Colorado
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – California
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – District of Columbia
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Delaware
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Georgia
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called…