Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Marketwatch: Trump’s 2017 tax bill was reportedly $750 — here’s how that stacks up against the average American’s taxes

September 29, 2020

That’s according to an analysis from Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy. (Wamhoff looked at income tax liabilities by adjusted gross income and divided the returns by the total liabilities to get the estimated tax bills. Read more

Bloomberg: Trump’s reported $750 federal income tax bill is smaller than the average payment by an American household making $20,000 a year

September 29, 2020

The data — drawn from the IRS — shows Trump’s tax payment is less compared to households earning between $20,000 and $25,000 each year. Around 9 million people filed tax returns in that group, said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank. Read more

Bloomberg: Profitable Losses, or How Trump Trimmed His Taxes: QuickTake

September 29, 2020

An article by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy on tax breaks for real-estate investors like Trump. Read more

Business Insider: I made $10,500 as a freelancer in 2018 — and still paid more taxes than Trump. The system is broken.

September 29, 2020

According to a 2019 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 60 companies, including Netflix, Chevron, and Eli Lilly, did not pay federal income taxes in 2018. “Instead of paying $US16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21% corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $US4.3 billion, […]

TRT World: Trump’s tax returns reveal a system that rewards all of America’s elite

September 29, 2020

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysed SEC filings of Fortune 500 companies and identified 60 major corporations that didn’t report any federal income tax expenses in 2019. Read more

Scoop: ‘The American People Should Be Pissed Off’: Critics Say Trump Tax Dodging Exposes System Rotten to the Core

September 29, 2020

Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a statement that the Times reporting does “not include Trump’s tax returns for 2018 and 2019, the first two years after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. The law opened new tax avoidance opportunities for wealthy […]

Washington Post: A pug, a cat and a baby have paid more in taxes than Trump reportedly has

September 29, 2020

Undocumented immigrants paid more than $11 billion in taxes in 2017, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That same year, Trump paid just $750, according to the New York Times story. Read more

CBS News: 7 takeaways from New York Times report on President Trump’s tax returns

September 29, 2020

At the same time Ivanka Trump was an executive officer of the Trump companies, she both profited from the hotels and the consulting fees, the Times story noted. The IRS in the past has pursued penalties against some companies that have sought to avoid taxes by paying consulting fees to people who weren’t, in fact, […]

Associated Press: Trump Went Even Further Than Other Uber-rich to Shrink Taxes

September 29, 2020

So say tax experts in the wake of a New York Times report Sunday that found that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in both 2016 and 2017 — and none at all in 11 of the 18 years that the newspaper examined. “The things that Trump did are typical of wealthy businesspeople and particularly […]

CBS News: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Trump for paying less in taxes than “waitresses and undocumented immigrants”

September 29, 2020

Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro joined Ocasio-Cortez’s criticism, citing a figure from the the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found undocumented immigrants pay nearly $12 billion in federal and state taxes a year. Read more

Orlando Sentinel: Trump’s tax strategy: Unfair or just good business?

September 29, 2020

Many large companies, including Amazon, General Motors and IBM, paid no taxes in 2018, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Something is wrong with the tax code, not the IRS. They can only collect what is owed under the law, so everyone with smarts is hiding under that law. Wake up, Congress, […]

Common Dreams: The American people should be angry’: Critics say Trump tax dodging exposes a system rotten to the core

September 29, 2020

Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a statement that the Times reporting does “not include Trump’s tax returns for 2018 and 2019, the first two years after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. The law opened new tax avoidance opportunities for wealthy […]

Washington Post: What Trump’s and Biden’s competing economic agendas reveal about the economy

September 28, 2020

Inequality also interacts with money and politics to block the very types of productive, equalizing spending that Biden proposes, while insisting on the nonproductive tax cuts that partially drive the Moody’s results. Consider, for example, that one of Trump’s few campaign proposals is to cut the tax on capital gains. According to the Institute on […]

Investopedia: How Fortune 500 Companies Avoid Paying Income Tax

September 28, 2020

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that over the eight-year period from 2008 to 2015, 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 21.2%—while the federal tax rate was 35% for all those years.1 Over that same period, 18 companies, including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com, and PG&E […]

Salon: Obamacare lawsuit heading to Supreme Court would slash taxes for top 0.1%

September 25, 2020

The lawsuit was filed after Senate Republicans unsuccessfully tried to repeal Obamacare despite campaigning on the issue for years. “Repealing ObamaCare has always been about tax cuts for the rich,” Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote in an op-ed during the repeal push. […]

Route 50: Why States and Localities Should Increase—Not Decrease—Spending

September 23, 2020

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) wrote in an April report, “Even with more federal support, states will need home-grown revenue solutions in the short, medium and long terms as the crisis and its fiscal fallout intensify, subside, and eventually give way to a new normal.” Read more

Politico Morning Tax: Digging in on SALT

September 21, 2020

Matt Gardner of the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy thought this particular portion of the SALT debate had a number of layers to it. Among them: Deductions for charitable giving have a more direct motivation than SALT — you know, to spur more donations. Plus, Gardner added, there’s the issue that Washington finds […]

New York Times: Morning Newsletter

September 18, 2020

Many states have tax systems that are regressive: They take a greater share of income from the poor than the rich. And because a disproportionate share of the richest taxpayers are white, these state tax systems also widen racial wealth gaps. In Illinois, for example, the lowest-earning fifth of the population pays 14.4 percent of […]

Black Enterprise: Study Shows Illinois Tax System Harder on Black, LatinX Taxpayers

September 18, 2020

A study released Thursday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showed Illinois’ flat tax system disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic taxpayers. According to the study, the state’s flat tax system has resulted in Black and Latinx taxpayers paying $4 billion more in income taxes than they would have under a fair tax […]

WREX Rockford: National research group: Flat tax structure favors wealthier Illinoisans

September 18, 2020

Another group has weighed in on the graduated income tax ballot questions voters will decide on in November. A research study conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found the state’s current flat tax structure creates a subsidy for wealthier residents. The institute is a national nonprofit group that analyzes tax systems. Their […]

Bloomberg: Stimulus Strategizing as Election Nears

September 18, 2020

Flat Tax Pitfalls: Illinois’ flat income tax perpetuates inequities that force minority communities to pay a large chunk of their earnings to the state, while permitting upper-income taxpayers to retain their wealth, according to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Yesterday’s analysis comes two months before voters will decide whether the […]

Chicago Tribune: Fair Tax or Hike?

September 18, 2020

And on Thursday, Yes for Fairness promoted a study from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, that said it found the long term effects of the flat tax over the past two decades deepened economic disparity, significantly impacting minority populations. Read more

Yahoo! Finance: Salt Cap Isn’t Scaring Away Blue State Millionaires

September 15, 2020

The $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions imposed as part of the 2017 Republican tax law is not causing high-income taxpayers to flee high-tax blue states, according to Carl Davis, research director at the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. In a blog post last week, Davis said that new IRS data […]

The Colorado Sun: Amendment B puts spotlight on Gallagher’s mixed legacy of budget cuts, tax relief and inequality in Colorado

September 15, 2020

Notably, property taxes are regressive — though not as much as sales tax, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

Bloomberg: DeVos-Backed School-Choice Groups Hurt by SALT Rules Crackdown

September 14, 2020

Critics of state tax credits say the IRS workaround rules were a common-sense effort to address donors double-dipping on tax credits — essentially collecting state and federal tax benefits on the same contributions. “They were stacking up state and federal tax cuts larger than what they ever donated,” said Carl Davis, research director, at the […]