Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

ProPublica: The IRS Decided to Get Tough Against Microsoft. Microsoft Got Tougher.

January 22, 2020

Microsoft, meanwhile, has continued to reap the benefits of its offshore deals. In 2017, the last year before the new tax law cut the corporate rate from 35% to 21%, Microsoft paid $2.4 billion in taxes on $29.9 billion in income, a rate of 8%. By that point, Microsoft had stored $142 billion in profits […]

McClatchy: Lifting the Cap on This Tax Break Would Benefit California’s Rich

January 17, 2020

The figures were developed by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. to project the likely effects if the Democrats’ proposal went into effect in 2022. That’s likely the earliest year when Democrats could have their policies go into full effect if the party takes control of the White House and Congress in 2021. […]

Hartford Business Journal: CT Voices proposes major state tax shift to reverse inequality

January 16, 2020

And creation of a new Child Tax Credit could provide poor and middle-income residents — even those earning nearly $500,000 per year — as much as $800 to $1,550 on each filer’s annual refund. “The child tax credit has been found to have staggering impacts on poverty reduction,” said Meg Wiehe, deputy executive director for […]

The Colorado Sun: Colorado progressives have a new target in their pursuit of a tax overhaul: the rich. Here’s why.

January 16, 2020

More progressive taxes aren’t a panacea for income inequality, either. With a top rate of 12.3%, plus a 1% millionaire tax, California has the most progressive tax code in the country, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It is also the seventh most unequal, with the wealthiest 1% making 30 times […]

Dallas Morning News: Trump slashed corporate tax rates to 21%, but many companies paid far less than that

January 13, 2020

Here’s another reason to complain: Many companies aren’t paying even the lower rate. In 2018, the first year under the new law, 379 profitable companies in the Fortune 500 paid an average effective rate of 11.3%, according to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank in Washington. Read […]

KTVB.com: Idaho Democratic leaders discuss their top priorities for the 2020 legislative session

January 12, 2020

The “circuit breaker” would protect seniors and low income homeowners from paying too high of a percentage of their income on property taxes. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a “circuit breaker” protects taxpayers from property tax overload just like an electric circuit breaker. It kicks in when a property tax bill […]

Between the Lines: Trump-GOP Tax Law Ushers in Lowest Corporate Tax Rates in 40 Years

January 8, 2020

Interview with Matthew Gardner, senior fellow with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, conducted by Scott Harris

Inside Sources: Creating an Economy That Works for All Starts With Repealing the Trump Tax Law

January 6, 2020

While some Americans received a tax cut during the 2018 filing season, it was nowhere enough to substantially improve their lives. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy warns, “The few provisions that targeted working families weren’t ambitious enough to make a notable difference for most working families.” This isn’t lost on the public, who remain opposed […]

Bloomberg: Sanders, Warren Compete for Who Can Tax Billionaires the Most

September 26, 2019

“We’re seeing such a dramatic change in the debate,” Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said. “There is a lot of agreement on the principle of wealth tax, though the average American may not differentiate between the two plans.” Sander’s plan could come with […]

Contra Costa Times: New sales tax proposal for transportation work gets Contra Costa supervisors’ blessing

September 24, 2019

According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, low-income families spend about three quarters of their income on items that are subject to sales taxes while middle-income families spend about half and the most wealthy households just about a sixth. Mitchoff acknowledged that combined with the Measure J half-cent tax that […]

Louisville Courier Journal: Scholarship Tax Credits Are Private School Vouchers and Tax Shelters for the Wealthy

September 24, 2019

In a 2017 analysis, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy took a look at how “scholarship tax credit” programs impacted the budgets of the 17 states where they had been put into effect. Taken together, these states were diverting more than $1 billion per year from the public coffers toward private schools via tax […]

New Internationalist: Why is Public Money Propping up Fossil Fuels?

September 19, 2019

Meanwhile, some countries are heading in precisely the wrong direction: over the next five years, the UK’s oil industry is set to receive $6.2 billion more than it pays in taxes, thanks to generous government support. In the US, Republicans’ tax reforms in 2017 handed $25 billion to oil and gas companies, according to the […]

KOAT: How Migrant Workers Pay Taxes

September 18, 2019

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports that in 2017, such workers paid $1.1 billion in personal income taxes, which can often help strengthen an immigration case. Read more

Newark Star-Ledger: Cory Booker’s New Tax Plan Takes a Cue from … Ronald Reagan?

September 18, 2019

Booker’s capital gains tax plan is aimed at richer residents. Currently, capital gains are taxed at 23.8 percent compared to a top rate for earned income of 37 percent. And 78 percent of capital gains income goes to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive […]

MarketWatch: Here’s What 2020 Democrats Have Said about Universal Basic Income

September 13, 2019

Harris’s proposal would cost more than $270 billion in 2020, according to an estimate by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

KTVZ: Wyden Unveils Tax Reform Proposal

September 12, 2019

Alan Essig, Executive Director, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy: “The term ‘anti-deferral accounting’ probably means little to most Americans now, but the idea, proposed by Senator Wyden today, has the potential to transform our nation’s tax system. Working Americans pay taxes on their income every year. But for very wealthy families, a great deal […]

Detroit Free Press: Trump’s Tax Cuts Are Helping the Wealthy. Here’s How to Help Everyone Else

September 8, 2019

This stark bait-and-switch was on full display with the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs” Act (TCJA). Billed as a way to help workers and create jobs, the federal tax law really helped wealthy residents and corporations get richer. In Michigan for 2019, more than half of the tax benefits of the TCJA went to the […]

OpEd News: Another Cruel–Irony The Homeless Pay for their Homelessness

September 7, 2019

A cursory look at the tax numbers blow the conservative’s tax mythmaking apart. A 2017 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the poorest of the poor, that’s those with annual income under $19,000 plop in more that 10 percent of the federal tax dollars. Toss in millions more to that […]

Forbes: Corporate America’s Promise To Focus Less On Profits Will Ring Hollow If We Can’t Tax The Rich

September 6, 2019

As Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, puts it in a blog, the joint statement likely reflects more of a fear of shifting political winds rather than some benevolent, introspective change of heart. “The truth is, the new statement reads like something Dr. Frankenstein might have written when […]

The American Prospect: The Republican War on the Capital Gains Tax

September 6, 2019

Also like George W. Bush, Trump has governed like a bog-standard conservative, with only tax cuts and deregulation to show for his first few years. Only one major piece of legislation is likely to get Trump’s signature in his entire first term: the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The effects of those cuts were […]

Common Dreams: Corporations Getting to Zero With GOP’s Inside Help on Tax Avoidance

September 5, 2019

Given the lack of transparency in corporate reporting, it is hard to tell how Aircastle’s strategies compare to those used by other companies. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reported in April, based on 10-Ks submitted to the SEC, that 60 of the Fortune 500 had zero or negative federal income tax payments […]

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Why Local Jurisdictions’ Heavy Reliance on Fines and Fees Is a Tax Policy Issue

September 4, 2019 • By Meg Wiehe

The exposé (Addicted to Fines: Small Towns Are Dangerously Dependent) raises two important issues that policymakers have the power to address. One, lack of revenue at the local level is linked to a broader challenge with state tax systems. Two, fines and fees often entrap lower-income people in a cycle of debt and, in some jurisdictions, ultimately criminalize poverty by casting unpaid fines as misdemeanor crimes.

Kansas City Star: Is There a Property Tax Fix for Next Year?

September 4, 2019

“Circuit breakers help offset the unfairness of a regressive property tax by identifying the individual taxpayers for whom property taxes are most burdensome and reducing their tax to a manageable level,” says the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. No homeowner should lose his or her residence because of an exorbitant property tax bill. Read […]

Press Herald: Think Tank Says Maine Has Reached ‘Tax Fairness’ Milestone

September 4, 2019

The center cited a 2018 report by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that said only five states and the District of Columbia had tax codes in which the bottom 20 percent paid a lower average effective tax rate than the top 1 percent. It said legislative changes this year in Maine […]

The Capital Times: Labor Report Chronicles Severe Decline of Unions in Wisconsin

August 31, 2019

On the gap between rich and poor, the report cites an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis that shows that the top 1% of Wisconsin earners pay and average of 7.7% of their income in state and local taxes. Nearly all other families pay more than 10 percent, which continually widens the gap. The […]