Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

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File Under “No Surprise”: Wealthiest Taxpayers Use Offshore Tax Shelters More Than the Rest of Us, New Research Finds

June 4, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner

Tax evasion matters. It drains needed revenues from the public treasury, and saps public confidence in rules of the game. A recent Pew Research poll finds that 60 percent of Americans are bothered “a lot” by the feeling that the best-off don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And now, thanks to a new report, […]

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Things Get Worse for Uber: Ride-Sharing Giant’s Taxes Under Scrutiny

June 4, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner

Since Uber’s much-hyped initial public offering last month, the news has been relentlessly bad for the scandal-plagued ride-sharing company. The company’s share price has fallen by 8 percent from its initial $45, meaning that billions of dollars of the company’s apparent value have vanished. This week the news got a little worse: Uber is under […]

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

June 4, 2019

Even more remarkably, the top 1 percent of households now hold 31 percent of the nation’s wealth (assets minus liabilities), or $30 trillion, while the entire bottom half of the nation’s households hold only about 1 percent, or $1 trillion. That comes to $23 million per household for the top 1 percent and $18,000 in […]

Washington Post: The Trump Tax Cuts Are Failing Badly

June 1, 2019

Giving companies more incentive to invest, then, won’t do much if they don’t have a reason to invest in the first place — which they haven’t recently. This raises the possibility that the Trump tax cuts won’t just be regressive but almost cartoonishly so. Consider this: According to a separate analysis by the left-leaning Institute […]

Newark Star-Ledger: Will This Tax Plan Boost Booker’s Campaign?

May 31, 2019

In New Jersey, almost three-quarters of the benefits, 74 percent, would flow to the poorest 40 percent of taxpayers, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive research group. Under the the Trump tax law, 72 percent of the benefits went to the richest 20 percent in the state and capped the […]

Yahoo! Finance: Corporations Paid $91 Billion Less in Taxes in 2018 under Trump’s Tax Law

May 31, 2019

“There are a lot of breaks and loopholes that allow a company not to pay,” said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). “People, when they think of tax reform, think the government is going to fix the tax code and get rid of breaks and […]

The Tennessean: Our Tax System Is Immoral and Unfair to the Middle Class | Opinion

May 30, 2019

Recently, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shared an analysis of Fortune 500 companies that finds at least 60 of the nation’s biggest corporations didn’t pay one cent in federal income taxes in 2018 and in turn had a collective $79 billion in profits. It is based on 2018 financial filings of the country’s […]

Winston Salem-Journal: Five Basic Truths About the State Budget

May 28, 2019

The budget is unfair and unjust: North Carolina has always relied upon a regressive tax structure that takes more from the incomes of the poor and middle-class than from the wealthy. But this pattern has grown significantly worse and more unfair in recent years as the personal income tax was flattened and cut and corporate […]

The Columbus Dispatch: Business Groups Pushing to Save Tax Breaks for Richest Ohioans

May 25, 2019

Policy Matters says the analysis, completed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, found that virtually all of the Ohio tax filers who would pay more under the overall House plan are among the top 5% of Ohio taxpayers, making over $208,000. Read more

Akron Beacon Journal: A $1 Billion State Tax Break Still Worth Shrinking

May 24, 2019

What does the House propose? It would reduce the exemption to the first $100,000 in “pass through” income and wipe out the special 3 percent tax rate. That would save $528 million a year. It would do so without affecting 86 percent of those claiming the exemption. Who would see a change? Policy Matters Ohio […]

New Hampshire Business Review: Some NH Firms Paid Little or No Tax in 2018

May 23, 2019

Those companies are hardly unique. “Not a Dime,” a recent study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), found that at least 60 of the Fortune 500 companies paid no taxes to the federal government in 2018, even though they made substantial profits. (There may be more, but the financial filings for the […]

New York Times: Democrats’ Tax Cuts Target Middle Class More Than Trump’s, Study Says

May 22, 2019

Tax plans from several Democratic candidates for president would cost less than President Trump’s signature tax cuts but deliver larger benefits to most low- and middle-income Americans, according to a new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank in Washington. The analysis is one of the first to examine […]

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Five Recent Federal Tax Credit Proposals Target Benefits to Bottom 60 Percent of Taxpayers

May 22, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

Five tax proposals announced this year are a radical departure from the top-heavy 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, targeting their benefits instead to low- and moderate income families while providing no or nominal tax cuts to the highest-earning households, a new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis of each of the five plans reveals.

Arizona Daily Sun: Tax Dodgers Inc.

May 21, 2019

How is it possible to pay less than zero? By riddling the tax code with so many special deductions and gimmicks that the government owes you money! On tax day this year, a watchdog group called ITEP (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy) issued a report documenting that 60 of America’s biggest corporations used the […]

Wharton: Have Stock Buybacks Gone Too Far?

May 16, 2019

Fueled by the lower corporate tax rate, share buybacks among S&P 500 companies shot to a fourth consecutive record in the last quarter of 2018, according to Standard & Poor’s. What’s more is that the lower tax rate enabled dozens of profitable Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon and IBM to avoid paying federal taxes […]

Hartford Courant: We Are a Group of Wealthy Connecticut residents, and we want to pay more in taxes.

May 14, 2019

Connecticut was slow to recover from the Great Recession. Meanwhile, inequality has skyrocketed. As the economy grew coming out of the recession, 100 percent of increased income in Connecticut has gone to the top 1 percent of earners. At the same time, the remaining 99 percent of income earners have seen their income decline, on […]

WBNS Ohio: Expert explains why Ohio gas prices can fluctuate so quickly

May 12, 2019

Ohio is now the 30th state to raise or reform its gas tax this decade, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Starting July 1, 2019, a 10.5 cent gas tax and 19 cent diesel tax increase will take effect with the purpose of fixing deteriorating roads and bridges around the state. […]

Salon: The Tax Bill for Many Big Polluters Last Year? $0

May 12, 2019

Adapting to our warming world is expensive. It costs a lot to build sea walls, cure disease outbreaks, and rebuild after floods. It takes money to invent better batteries, turn farms into carbon sinks, and replace polluting power plants with clean energy. Instead of maybe taxing carbon emissions to pay for all this, the United […]

ABC News: Trump Lobbied for Tax Loopholes in the 1990s

May 9, 2019

The sweeping, bipartisan law that Trump railed against was popular in both Democrat and Republican circles, as it got rid of numerous loopholes, reduced tax-code chicanery and lowered tax rates across income brackets. “The 1986 tax law was the gold standard for tax reform because it removed loopholes and simplified the tax system,” said Steve […]

Allentown Morning Call: Fortune 500 company PPL not only paid no federal taxes last year, it got a $19 million rebate; it says it has invested those savings

May 8, 2019

Sixty of America’s Fortune 500 corporations paid nothing — or got refunds — for 2018, according to a report released last month by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, described as a left-leaning think tank by the Washington Post and New York Times. In PPL’s case, the institute said the company received […]

Voice of America: In the US, Death Is More Certain Than Taxes

May 8, 2019

In the corporate world, however, with the tax overhaul pushed to passage by Trump and Republican lawmakers in 2017 that cut the basic federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, 60 of the biggest U.S. corporations avoided paying any taxes last year, according to the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The research […]

The Hill: Tax Prep Companies Under Fire over Free File Program

May 8, 2019

Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy for the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said that it’s inevitable that when private companies are tasked with offering a public service, they will do things to maximize their profits. A free tax-filing service “would be carried out more efficiently publicly rather than privately,” he added. […]

Governing: What States Can Do to Drastically Reduce Child Poverty

May 6, 2019

The following is an excerpt of an op-ed by Meg Wiehe and Christopher Whimer published in Governing: States have been called laboratories of democracy because they often launch some of the boldest policy ideas. Before the Affordable Care Act provided health insurance access for millions more Americans, for example, Massachusetts implemented a law that served […]

Newark Star-Ledger: The 5 NJ Companies Reported Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Income Last Year. Their Federal Tax Bill: $0

May 5, 2019

Identifying companies that pay nothing in federal taxes is no easy task, said Matthew Gardner, one of the authors of the IATEP report, and he suspects there are far more than the ones that his analysis uncovered. “The real number is probably bigger than 60,” he said. “Almost certainly.” The data examined by the group […]

Crain’s Detroit Business: If Whitmer’s Gas Tax Increase Is Dead, Sales Tax on Services, Anyone?

May 5, 2019

Car rentals at Detroit Metro Airport are subject to the sales tax. But ordering a ride from an Uber driver at the airport is exempted from sales tax because it’s a service. “Why should one of those people pay sales taxes and not the other?” asks Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation […]