Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Talking Points Memo: Why The Checks-For-Everyone Idea To Ward Off A Recession Is Gaining Steam

March 17, 2020

An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the top 20 percent of income earners would reap two-third of the benefit of a payroll tax cut, while the bottom fifth of income earners would receive only 2 percent of the benefit. A direct cash transfer, particularly one phased out at higher […]

Bloomberg Tax: Virus Panic Prompts Trump Call for Tax Relief

March 12, 2020

A payroll tax cut, something the administration has floated, would be an ineffective stimulus measure to combat the virus’s economic fallout, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Cutting the payroll tax—a levy imposed on employees, employers, and self-employed individuals to fund Social Security—would primarily benefit higher earners, according to an analysis from […]

New York Times: Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut Would Dwarf the 2008 Bank Bailout

March 12, 2020

The largest gains in dollar figures would go to households earning more than $123,000 a year, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. Read more

Washington Examiner: In cutting payroll taxes to spur the economy, Trump would be following in Obama’s footsteps

March 12, 2020

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-of-center nonpartisan tax policy organization, found that Obama’s payroll tax cut didn’t benefit the lower and middle class very well. The study showed that the portion of the payroll tax cut that went to the richest 20% of households was 47% in 2011 and 46% in 2012. […]

The Sacramento Bee: Trump has big plans for California highway repair, but no plan to pay for it

March 12, 2020

While there’s no way to know how much states increases would be curbed if federal taxes were higher, if at all, Carl Davis, research director at Washington, D.C., Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, saw two reasons for the state increases. One is that the cost of asphalt, concrete, machine and labor has gone up. […]

Politico: That’s a lot of tax relief

March 11, 2020

Just looking at sales and excise taxes, the eight states where recreational pot was legal in 2019 raised close to $2 billion in revenue, according to Carl Davis of the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That adds up to an increase of around a third, or nearly a half-billion dollars. Why the big […]

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TurboTax Is a Case Study for Why the IRS Should Administer Free File Program

March 9, 2020 • By Jenice Robinson

TurboTax and other online tax preparation companies rely on complicating tax filing and limiting competition as part of their business model.

Washington Post: Virginia General Assembly approves higher gas tax, speed cameras and cellphone ban

March 8, 2020

Virginia joins 31 states that have raised their gas taxes or changed formulas for them in the past decade, responding to declines in revenue, according to the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Twenty-two states have variable-rate taxes to guard against inflation. Read more

Market Watch: This is how much American workers saved during the first year after Trump tax overhaul

March 4, 2020

Focusing on personal taxes didn’t tell the whole story, according to Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP. “The parts of the Trump tax cuts that really benefit the rich are not the personal-income-tax cuts but the corporate-income-tax cuts and estate-tax cuts,” according to […]

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Administration Once Again Touts Misleading Information on 2017 Tax Law

March 3, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner

The Trump administration has remained consistently on message about its 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. More than two years after the passage of the law, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is still forlornly attempting to portray it as a boon for working families, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. Earlier this week the Treasury […]

Connecticut Mirror: After one alarming tax fairness study, CT is wary of launching a second

March 3, 2020

Gasoline distributors shift the entire cost of Connecticut’s 8.1% wholesale fuel tax onto local filling stations, which then pass it all onto motorists — who also pay a 25-cents-per-gallon retail tax. Meg Wiehe, deputy executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said Connecticut already is a land of “stagnating working-class incomes” and […]

MSNBC: Team Trump wants even more corporate tax breaks in a second term

February 28, 2020

For another, corporations clearly don’t need a lower rate since so many of them aren’t even paying taxes at the current rate. Late last year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released the results of a detailed study that found of the Fortune 500 companies, about 400 paid an average tax rate of about […]

The Chicago Tribune: Recreational marijuana sales in Illinois generated more than $10 million in tax revenue in January

February 25, 2020

Many dispensaries continue to sell recreational marijuana only on certain days of the week or for restricted hours. Though greater volumes of product continue to filter into the market from Illinois growers, the statewide shortage is expected to last for a year or more. Facilities that grow weed are expanding, and dozens of dispensaries are […]

The Hill: Financial trade tax gains traction with 2020 Democrats

February 25, 2020

Democratic presidential candidates across the ideological spectrum are calling for taxes on financial trades, breathing new life into an idea that for many years was promoted primarily in progressive circles. “It’s moving more into the mainstream,” said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

Anchorage Press: The Pocketbook Reasons Most Alaskans Should Prefer an Income Tax to a Statewide Sales Tax

February 24, 2020

An analysis in 2017 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) produced similar results. All people in households who make less than $73,000 per year—and some in higher-earning households—would do better financially under a state income tax than a statewide sales tax, according to this study. A statewide sales tax would hit both […]

MarketWatch: Jeff Bezos spent more on this house in Beverly Hills than Amazon has paid so far in federal corporate income tax for 2019

February 20, 2020

Amazon listed a “summary” of its 2019 U.S. taxes as including $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes and customs duties, and more than $1.6 billion in state and local taxes. The company also noted that it remitted nearly $9 billion in sales and use taxes to states and localities in accordance with […]

Washington Post: White House advisers privately float minimum tax on corporations amid blowback over 2017 GOP law

February 20, 2020

Opponents of the tax law such as presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have assailed the GOP and multibillion-dollar corporations for allegedly paying $0 in federal taxes under the new law. Ninety-one companies on the Fortune 500 paid $0 in federal corporate taxes in 2018, more than double the amount in previous years, according to […]

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Tax reform may be more lucrative than advertised for corporations

February 20, 2020

Many of Minnesota’s major corporations paid lower tax rates in 2018 than new, dramatically lower corporate tax rates. That was among the findings in an analysis of government filings by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). ITEP, a nonprofit that gathers data to show how “taxes affect public revenue and people of various […]

Factcheck.org: FactChecking the Las Vegas Democratic Debate

February 20, 2020

There were indeed reports last year, prompted by the findings of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, indicating that the two companies and others paid no federal income taxes in 2018. The ITEP more recently noted, based on a Securities and Exchange Commission filing for 2019, that Amazon “paid $162 million of federal income taxes, a bit more than […]

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White House Advisors’ Push for Corporate ‘Minimum Tax’ Will Not Fix the Tax Law

February 19, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner

A White House proposal to follow Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts with a minimum corporate tax would be like shooting a person on Fifth Avenue and then offering them a band aid.

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2021 Trump Budget Continues 40-Year Trickle-Down Economic Agenda

February 12, 2020 • By Jenice Robinson

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may as well have been called the Promise for Austerity Later Act.

Yahoo! Finance: In Search of the ‘Disappearing Corporate Income Tax’

February 12, 2020

Those losses, driven by generous rule-writing and interpretations of the 2017 tax law by the U.S. Treasury, are so substantial that they were deemed “tax cuts 2.0” by the liberal-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. (You can read more about the revision in a recent blog post from CBO director Phillip Swagel, and in […]

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Hearing Witness: Trump Administration Giving Tax Breaks Not Allowed by Law

February 12, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff

The Treasury Department, tasked with issuing regulations to implement the hastily drafted Trump-GOP tax law, is concocting new tax breaks that are not provided in the law. This is the short version of what we learned while watching Tuesday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax.”

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Why Today’s Congressional Hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax” Is Imperative

February 11, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff

The United States is collecting a historically low level of tax revenue from corporations. In 2018, corporate tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product (the nation’s economic output) dipped to 1 percent and reached just 1.1 percent in 2019. The only other times in the last 40 years that tax collections were this […]

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President Trump’s 2021 Budget: Promises Made, Promises Broken

February 10, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff

President Trump has kept only one of his promises--his pledge to lower taxes for corporations and their investors.   The budget plan he released today again breaks his promise to reject cuts in Medicaid that would affect millions of people. His budget once again fails to eliminate the deficit, much the less the national debt, during his presidency as he promised. It cuts trillions from safety net programs and student aid programs despite his pledge to stand for forgotten Americans.