Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Denver Post: Obama’s Action Appeases Immigrant Hopefuls in Colorado

November 24, 2014

  With the work permits promised in Obama’s orders, those workers could add an estimated $43 million in tax revenues because their wages would increase and more of them would file income tax returns, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Those workers already pay more than $152 million in state and local […]

The Modesto Bee: Undocument Immigrants Pay $10 Billion in Taxes

November 20, 2014

Re “Movie shows MJC’s bias “ (Letters, Nov. 16): The recent letter complaining about illegal immigrants stated that they do not pay income taxes. This is not correct. A study by the non-profit, non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that: “Undocumented immigrants currently pay $1.2 billion in personal income taxes, $1.2 billion in […]

International Business Times: Immigration Reform 2014: Economic Impact Of Obama Helping Immigrants Includes More Jobs, Tax Revenue

November 20, 2014

TEXAS Immigrants comprise 21 percent of Texas’ labor force, according to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau. If all illegal immigrants were removed from Texas, the state would lose $69.3 billion in economic activity, $30.8 billion in gross state product and roughly 403,174 jobs, according to a 2008 report by the Perryman Group. If illegal immigrants […]

The Tucson Weekly: Arizona Is the 5th Worth State to Be Poor–Tax Wise

November 20, 2014

Everybody knows Arizona is a low tax state. Our legislature has been cutting rates for decades, and as a result, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, we’re number 35 in overall state taxes; only 15 states have rates lower than ours. Not so if you’re poor, however. If you make $27,000 or […]

The Times Free Press: A Taxing Question

November 17, 2014

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal-leaning think tank, last spring estimated that if the Hall tax were eliminated, Tennessee’s wealthiest residents with annual incomes of $970,000 would receive “a whopping 63 percent of the benefits of the tax cut.” Another 23 percent would end up in federal coffers because those who paid […]

Hartford Business Journal: Legislative Panel Aims to Rethink CT’s Tax Code

November 17, 2014

But if the rich feel slighted, consider this: A study last year by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that lower- and middle-income residents pay a higher percentage of their wages to the income tax than do the wealthy. As if the panel’s charge wasn’t broad enough, it has one more thing to […]

Yahoo! Finance: Was Steve Balmer Hunting Good Will in Clipper’s Deal?

November 6, 2014

Arguments aside, some, including Matt Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), said the law including sports franchises in the Goodwill tax write-off was a bad one. In a blog post, Gardner said, “It’s bad enough that the goodwill tax rule allows companies to deduct costs they may never incur […]

Governing: Massachusetts Rolls Back Automatic Gas Tax Hike

November 6, 2014

And Massachusetts has plenty of company. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents has been in place since 1993. Twenty-four states haven’t touched their gas tax rates in more than a decade, according to left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. For 16 of those states, the last change was more than 20 years ago. […]

Bloomberg BNA: Will Massachusetts’ Rejection of Inflation-Adjusted Gas Tax Have Federal Implications?

November 6, 2014

States have varying gas tax rate structures, which can be boiled down to one of two general forms: a fixed-rate tax or a variable-rate tax.  Flat-rate gas taxes, like those in now Massachusetts and New Hampshire, collect a certain number of cents per gallon of gas purchased.  Meanwhile, variable-rate taxes are calculated one of several […]

Windy City Times: Immigration Facts and Fictions

November 6, 2014

Unauthorized migrants pay sales taxes, property taxes, whether they rent or own, ‘use’ taxes, and, in some cases, even income taxes, whether state, local, or federal, including social security and medicare taxes. In July 2013, the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ( ITEP ) issued a report that statistically demonstrated the tax contributions […]

LaCrosse Tribune: Act 10 Only Benefitted the Wealthy

November 3, 2014

According to the institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the wealthiest 1 percent realized an average income tax cut of $2,518, while those who lost a big chunk of their income realized a tax cut of $197 to $323 per year. It’s the same story with property owners. Most of the savings went to large […]

Memphis Daily News: Why Are Tennesseans so Afraid of an Income Tax?

November 3, 2014

Six of the nine state states without a state income tax – Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Washington, Alaska and Nevada – have had higher than average annual unemployment rates over the last decade, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Five of the nine – Tennessee, Florida, New Hampshire, Alaska and Nevada – are […]

Stateline: Voters to Weigh Tax Caps, Increases

November 3, 2014

Massachusetts voters will get to decide whether to repeal a provision that automatically raises the state gasoline tax with inflation. According to the nonpartisanInstitute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 14 states have a “variable rate” gas tax, while 32 states have fixed taxes (the others didn’t supply data). Read more

24/7 Wall Street: Most and Least Friendly States for Business

November 3, 2014

Not all tax experts agree that The Tax Foundation’s description of what makes a good business tax climate fairly reflects the attractiveness of a state for companies. Speaking to 24/7 Wall St., Matthew Gardener, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, described fiscal policy as a two-sided coin. For fiscal policy, “the […]

Newsweek: Ultra-Conservative Experiments Are Put to the Test

October 28, 2014

The nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that the new North Carolina tax plan will cost the state over $1 billion this fiscal year compared to the past one. “That’s about equivalent to the entire community college budget,” said Tazra Mitchell, a budget analyst at the Justice Center. “So that’s not a small […]

Winston Salem Journal: A Legislative Bad Decision That’s Looking Even Worse

October 28, 2014

And the numbers aren’t political spin. The current shortfall figures come from the Fiscal Research Division of the General Assembly. The estimate of how large the shortfall could become is from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, using the latest state taxpayer data. The Institute says the cost of the Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax cut […]

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Repeal of the State Income Tax Would Harm Ohio on Several Levels

October 28, 2014

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a nonprofit Washington, D.C., research group with a model of the tax system, reviewed the effects of income tax repeal. It found that if the tax were repealed and just half of it was replaced with a higher sales tax, the top 1 percent of Ohio residents, who […]

WBAA: Think Tank Questions Effort to Eliminate Business Personal Property Tax

October 28, 2014

Matt Gardner with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says property taxes nationwide are increasingly limited to real property. But he says for equipment that has significant value to a business‘s profit-making ability, it makes sense to tax that equipment. “It’s a rough proxy for the benefits you derive from government services,” says Gardner. […]

USA Today: Fact Checking the NC Senate Race

October 16, 2014

Meg Wiehe, state tax policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said that, based only on the income tax portion of the changes, about 35% of North Carolinians would see a tax increase, another 16% would see no change, and roughly 49% would get a tax cut. Once you factor in the […]

New York Times: The State-by-State Revival of the Right

October 10, 2014

In an analysis of how the Indiana cuts are distributed by income groups, the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the bottom 20 percent are getting an average cut of $10, those in the middle are getting $56, while the top 1 percent get $1,181. Read more

Lodi News Sentinel: Middle Class Is Paying for Corporate Tax Breaks

October 10, 2014

Further details of these types of corporate shenanigans can be found in the paper “Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,” published in February 2014. Read more

Bloomberg BNA: Will Big Brother Soon Track Your Car for Tax Purposes?

October 10, 2014

All states impose some kind of gas tax that generally supports transportation infrastructure, but the taxes and fees that drivers actually pay make up a smaller share of total highway funding than at any point since the Interstate Highway System was created in 1957, according to a May 2014 policy brief by the Institute on […]

Politico: Fact Checking the NC Senate Race

October 10, 2014

  Meg Wiehe, state tax policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said that, based only on the income tax portion of the changes, about 35 percent of North Carolinians would see a tax increase, another 16 percent would see no change, and roughly 49 percent would get a tax cut. Once […]

Governing: Will Mass. Repeal Gas Tax Hike?

October 10, 2014

Matthew Gardner, executive director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, notes that many states in recent years have gone down the same road as Massachusetts by linking fuel taxes to inflation or prices. “It’s been a very welcome trend in the last few years toward indexing the gas tax for some measure […]

Wisconsin State Journal: Analyses of Tax Mix Proposal Show Bigger Benefit for the Wealthy

October 7, 2014

The liberal Wisconsin Budget Project has released an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showing how the tax burden would change for different income groups. Under one scenario highlighted in the study as being the most balanced, ITEP projects the top 1 percent of earners would see a 0.6 percent reduction […]