Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

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

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

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 […]

Washington Post: Why the U.S. Economy Is Worse Than It Seems

August 27, 2019

The situation looks very different at the high end of the economic scale. Over the past decade, the nation’s highest earners (the 95th percentile) saw their wages grow at almost four times the rate of those whose earnings put them in the middle of the pack (the 50th percentile). Even more remarkably, the top 1 […]

NPR: California Says Its Cannabis Revenue Has Fallen Short Of Estimates, Despite Gains

August 23, 2019

“After adjusting for population, the Golden State raised the second-least amount of revenue from cannabis taxes during the second quarter among states with legal sales, ahead of only Massachusetts,” according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The result was a departure from the spikes seen in states such as Colorado, Washington and Oregon […]

The Hill: Conservatives Push Trump Tariff Relief over Payroll Tax Cuts

August 23, 2019

And conservatives aren’t the only critics of a potential payroll tax reduction. Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said there are more targeted ways to boost consumer spending among low- and middle-income people. “It is inaccurate to think of a payroll tax cut as an […]

BBC: Three Ways Trump Could Juice the Economy

August 22, 2019

The policy was last used during the Obama administration in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis when it faced huge pushback from Congressional Republicans. In 2011 and 2012, the former president lowered the payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%, immediately giving American workers more disposable income. The White House is nervous that something bad […]

Fortune: What Trump’s Brief Flirtation With a Payroll Tax Cut Says About the State of the Economy

August 21, 2019

“The administration based the big 2017 tax cut on the idea that it would spur economic growth,” says Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. “At a time when there’s little evidence that it’s doing so, they’re under pressure to find […]

Politico Morning Tax: Moderately Short

August 21, 2019

In all, the Congressional Research Service found in 2016 that the seven states collect some $563 million a year in taxes on internet access, and some experts worry that the budget math in those capitals could be more difficult next year without those revenues. “It could prove to be a very ill-timed tax cut, from […]

CBS News: Why Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut Wouldn’t Do Much for the Economy

August 20, 2019

There’s also a political risk in saying the economy needs a spark only 18 months after the Republican party passed one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. “The Trump administration said their 2017 law was a middle-class tax cut. So when they’re saying, ‘Now we need a cut to help consumers,’ it’s an […]

Washington Times: Trump Says He’s Considering Cut in Payroll Taxes, Calls on Fed to Cut Rates

August 20, 2019

Cutting payroll taxes that fund Social Security programs “should not be cut except in extreme situations,” said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. In 2011 and 2012, Congress and President Obama reduced the part of the payroll tax paid directly by employees from 6.2% to 4.2%. […]

Governing: High on Pot Taxes

August 20, 2019

But even with maximized revenue, pot taxes will likely only account for about 1 percent of overall state budgets, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The $266 million Colorado collected in 2018, for instance, pales next to the state’s $15 billion in total revenues and $32 billion budget. Read more

New York Times: Trump’s Policy Could Alter the Face of the American Immigrant

August 15, 2019

For example, an updated report released in March 2017 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants alone contribute $11.74 billion each year in taxes, though they do not qualify for most public benefits. Read more

Boston WCVB: Last Sales Tax Holiday Cost State up to $38M

August 14, 2019

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said in a July report that the benefits from sales tax holidays are “minimal,” saying the benefits disproportionately benefit already-wealthy taxpayers and cost crucial revenue that will need to be made up elsewhere. “In the long run, sales tax holidays leave a regressive tax system unchanged, and the […]

NewsDay: Green card policy is shortsighted

August 14, 2019

Meanwhile, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, found in April that 60 top corporations not only paid no federal income tax for 2018, but received tax refunds from the public treasury. Money for these refunds comes partly from taxes paid by those targeted immigrants. Read more