Alex Welch – Page 70

ITEP's Research Priorities

ITEP Work in Action November 6, 2017
Arizona Center for Economic Progress: With Further Analysis Completed, It’s Time to Call the GOP Tax Plan What it Is: Welfare for the Wealthy

A 50-state analysis of the House tax plan released last week reveals that in Arizona the wealthiest 1% of Arizonans will receive the greatest share of the total tax cut in year…
blog October 31, 2017
Trump Administration Might Propose a Long-Overdue Gas Tax Increase

The Trump Administration is reportedly considering backing a 7-cent increase in the federal gas tax next year to pay for improvements in the nation’s infrastructure. While most of the tax policy ideas coming from the administration in recent weeks would undermine the nation’s ability to fund core public services, this one is a notable exception.
report October 26, 2017
Trickle-Down Dries Up: States without personal income taxes lag behind states with the highest top tax rates

Lawmakers who support reducing or eliminating state personal income taxes typically claim that doing so will spur economic growth. Often, this claim is accompanied by the assertion that states without income taxes are booming, and that their success could be replicated by any state that abandons its income tax. To help evaluate these arguments, this study compares the economic performance of the nine states without broad-based personal income taxes to their mirror opposites—the nine states levying the highest top marginal personal income tax rates throughout the last decade.
ITEP Work in Action October 18, 2017
Michigan League for Public Policy: Immigrant families in Michigan: A state profile

Michigan immigrants also contribute millions in tax revenue each year, and in doing so help pay for important public programs and infrastructure in the state. In 2015 for example, undocumented…
blog October 18, 2017
Tax Foundation Updates Its Problematic Wishlist for State Tax Policy

This week the Tax Foundation published its 2018 State Business Tax Climate Index, or as University of Iowa economist Peter Fisher has nicknamed it, the “Waste of Time Index.”
blog September 15, 2017
Poverty is Down, But State Tax Codes Could Bring It Even Lower

The U.S. Census Bureau released its annual data on income, poverty and health insurance coverage this week. For the second consecutive year, the national poverty rate declined and the well-being of America’s most economically vulnerable has generally improved. In 2016, the year of the latest available data, 40.6 million (or nearly 1 in 8) Americans were living in poverty.
report September 14, 2017
State Tax Codes as Poverty Fighting Tools

Astonishingly, tax policies in virtually every state make it harder for those living in poverty to make ends meet. When all the taxes imposed by state and local governments are taken into account, every state imposes higher effective tax rates on poor families than on the richest taxpayers.
ITEP Work in Action September 12, 2017
New Jersey Policy Perspective: Reforming New Jersey’s Income Tax Would Help Build Shared Prosperity

These reforms would also make New Jersey’s tax system more equitable, but it would not undo the tax code’s upside-down nature, in which low-income and middle-class New Jerseyans pay greater shares of their incomes to state and local taxes than wealthy residents. With these changes, this inequity would be slightly evened out. The share paid by the top 1 percent would rise to 7.7 percent from 7.1 percent, but that would still be lower than any other group of New Jersey families.
brief September 11, 2017
Reducing the Cost of Child Care Through State Tax Codes in 2017

Low- and middle-income working parents spend a significant portion of their income on child care. As the number of parents working outside of the home continues to rise, child care expenses have become an unavoidable and increasingly unaffordable expense. This policy brief examines state tax policy tools that can be used to make child care more affordable: a dependent care tax credit modeled after the federal program and a deduction for child care expenses.
brief September 11, 2017
Property Tax Circuit Breakers in 2017

State lawmakers seeking to make residential property taxes more affordable have two broad options: across-the-board tax cuts for taxpayers at all income levels, such as a homestead exemption or a tax cap, and targeted tax breaks that are given only to particular groups of low- and middle-income taxpayers. One such targeted program to reduce property taxes is called a “circuit breaker” because it protects taxpayers from a property tax “overload” just like an electric circuit breaker: when a property tax bill exceeds a certain percentage of a taxpayer’s income, the circuit breaker reduces property taxes in excess of this “overload” level. This policy brief surveys the advantages and disadvantages of the circuit breaker approach to reducing property taxes.
brief September 11, 2017
Options for a Less Regressive Sales Tax in 2017

Sales taxes are one of the most important revenue sources for state and local governments; however, they are also among the most unfair taxes, falling more heavily on low- and middle-income households. Therefore, it is important that policymakers nationwide find ways to make sales taxes more equitable while preserving this important source of funding for public services. This policy brief discusses two approaches to a less regressive sales tax: broad-based exemptions and targeted sales tax credits.
brief September 11, 2017
Rewarding Work Through State Earned Income Tax Credits in 2017

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a policy designed to bolster the earnings of low-wage workers and offset some of the taxes they pay, providing the opportunity for struggling families to step up and out of poverty toward meaningful economic security. The federal EITC has kept millions of Americans out of poverty since its enactment in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, the effectiveness of the EITC has been magnified as many states have enacted and later expanded their own credits.
ITEP Work in Action September 5, 2017
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: The Trump Tax Plan: What Would It Mean for Arkansas?

Who benefits and who loses under the Trump tax plan? An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimates that Arkansas would fare worse under the plan compared to other states. Relative to our share of the U.S. population, we would be one of the 12 states receiving the lowest share of the total Trump tax cut.
ITEP Work in Action September 1, 2017
New Mexico Voices for Children: The Trump Tax Plan Isn’t ‘Reform.’ Here’s Why:

In April the Trump administration released a sketchy outline of their half-baked ideas for tax changes. An analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) of that back-of-the-envelope ‘plan’ found that nearly half (48 percent) of Trump’s proposed tax cuts would go to millionaires. Millionaires make up only 0.5 percent of the U.S. population.
ITEP Work in Action August 31, 2017
New Mexico Voices for Children: Trump Tax Plan Does Little for NM’s Middle Class

Average New Mexicans would not benefit much from President Trump’s tax reform proposal, which would give the biggest tax breaks to New Mexico’s millionaires. That’s according to a report released recently by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
ITEP Work in Action August 24, 2017
Maryland Center on Economic Policy: Trump Tax Framework Would Give Away Trillions in Tax Breaks to Millionaires

The Trump administration and congressional leaders are gearing up to overhaul the federal tax code this fall. While many of the details remain fuzzy, one thing is clear: the administration’s top priority is to hand out big tax breaks to millionaires.
ITEP Work in Action August 21, 2017
Budget and Tax Center: Costly Tax Cuts in New State Budget Continue Precarious Road Ahead for North Carolina

The new two-year state budget passed by lawmakers included another package of tax cuts that will further limit the amount of revenue available for public investments. The latest tax cuts will reduce annual available revenue by $900 million and, when combined with tax cuts passed since 2013, result in an estimated $3.5 billion in less annual revenue compared to the tax system that was in place prior to tax changes in 2013.
ITEP Work in Action August 17, 2017
Maine Center for Economic Policy: Maine Millionaires Primary Recipients of Proposed Trump Tax Breaks

New analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows Maine’s millionaires would get an average tax cut of $135,220 under President Trump’s proposed tax plan. Maine millionaires represent only 0.3 percent of all Maine households, yet would receive more than a quarter of all tax breaks.
ITEP Work in Action August 15, 2017
Indiana Institute for Working Families: Trump Tax Plan Would Shortchange Indiana, Middle Class & Working Families (But Would Let Them Eat Cake)

A new analysis of the Trump tax plan from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy shows that Indiana would only get an 87% share of tax cuts relative to the state’s ratio of the U.S. population. This is the 23rd-smallest share among states. In part because the plan is aimed at high-income households and Indiana is a poorer state, no matter how you slice it, Indiana gets shortchanged compared to the average state by Trump’s plan.
blog July 24, 2017
Sound Tax Policy Made a Comeback in 2017

2017 marked a sea change in state tax policy and a stark departure from the current federal tax debate as dubious supply-side economic theories began to lose their grip on…
brief July 21, 2017
Rewarding Work Through State Earned Income Tax Credits

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a policy designed to bolster the earnings of low-wage workers and offset some of the taxes they pay, providing the opportunity for struggling families to step up and out of poverty toward meaningful economic security. The federal EITC has kept millions of Americans out of poverty since its enactment in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, the effectiveness of the EITC has been magnified as many states have enacted and later expanded their own credits.
ITEP Work in Action July 21, 2017
Florida Policy Institute: The Growing Divide: Federal Tax Plan Would Give Massive Tax Cuts to Wealthy Floridians as the Poorest Americans Continue to Struggle

The federal tax plan broadly outlined by the current administration would do very little to create opportunities for Floridians struggling to make ends meet. Instead, the tax plan would provide massive tax cuts for Florida’s highest income earners, accordingly to a recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Broadly outlined, the plan is likely to make an already unfair tax system that favors the wealthy even worse.
ITEP Work in Action July 21, 2017
New Jersey Policy Perspectives: Trump Tax Plan: A Boon for the Wealthiest New Jerseyans

A federal tax package based on President Trump’s April outline would fail to deliver on its promise of mostly helping the middle class, instead showering most of its help to the richest 1 percent, according to a new 50-state analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released today.
ITEP Work in Action July 21, 2017
Hope Policy Institute: Mississippi’s Wealthiest Get the Most Benefit under New Federal Tax Cut Proposal

New research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) looks at the potential effects of a tax cut proposal from the Trump Administration on families in the 50 states. The tax cut proposal would reduce the tax rate on corporate income from 35 percent to 15 percent, would repeal the estate tax, replace the current income tax brackets with three brackets at 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent, eliminate most itemized deductions, except charitable giving and home mortgage interest, and create a new tax credit for childcare expenses, among other things.
ITEP Work in Action July 21, 2017
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Trump Tax Plan Would Be a Windfall for Only the Wealthiest Kentuckians

The wealthiest Kentuckians would be winners from the $4.8 trillion in federal tax cuts President Donald Trump has proposed, as shown by a new report from the Institute on Taxation…