Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Democracy Now: Joseph Stiglitz: Elizabeth Warren & Bernie Sanders Want to Make the Economy Work for All Americans

April 25, 2019

This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has found the number of large U.S. companies who paid nothing in federal taxes has doubled in recent years. The companies include Amazon, Netflix, General Motors, IBM, Chevron, Eli Lilly, Delta, Occidental Petroleum, Honeywell, Prudential, Halliburton, Whirlpool and […]

New York Times: Dealbook Briefing

April 24, 2019

“There’s a general rule that you’re not supposed to be able to claim losses for more than you put into a deal,” Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, told Businessweek. “Real estate is the exception.” Read more

Bloomberg: Want to Make Millions and Pay No Taxes? Try Real Estate

April 24, 2019

“There’s a general rule that you’re not supposed to be able to claim losses for more than you put into a deal,” says Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank. “Real estate is the exception.” Read more

Vox: Democrats don’t have to wait for Trump to leave office to cut child poverty

April 17, 2019

But these plans have one major obstacle: Donald Trump is president. Policymakers in the Democratic fold have been arguing over what should happen in a hypothetical 2021 in which Trump has been defeated, Democrats control the Senate, and the party gets a brief opening to pass legislation. There’s no guarantee that will happen (especially the […]

Fox Business: Amazon Isn’t the Only Company that Paid $0 in Taxes Last Year

April 17, 2019

Under President Trump’s new tax law, 60 of America’s biggest corporations paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018, despite earning billions of dollars in profits. Amazon, Netflix, General Motors, Chevron, JetBlue, IBM and U.S. Steel were all among the companies that avoided taxes last year using a diverse array of loopholes and tax breaks, according […]

Des Moines Register: Large Corporations Are Winning Big Under GOP Tax Law

April 17, 2019

The GOP also doesn’t talk about how the biggest winners of the controversial tax law are — surprise — some of the country’s largest, publicly held corporations. They owed nothing on the billions of dollars in profits they earned. At least 60 companies reported their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero or less than […]

Detroit Metro Times: Five Top Michigan Corporations Paid $0 in Taxes

April 17, 2019

ou may have paid federal taxes, but four Fortune 500 companies in Michigan did not. In fact, they received hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds collectively. DTE Energy, Penske Automotive Group, Whirlpool, and General Motors are among 60 corporations nationally that paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018 despite billions in profits. That’s partly […]

InsideSources: How the GOP Tax Law Benefited Big Tech

April 17, 2019

Big Tech companies like Amazon, IBM and Netflix paid no federal income tax this year according to data compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), and some rushed to blame Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) for handing out more tax breaks to corporations instead of ordinary Americans. Read more

Texas Monthly:The Governor Wants to Replace Property Taxes With ‘Consumption’ Taxes. That’s a Terrible Idea.

April 16, 2019

The trick, of course, is that consumption taxes are regressive, and property taxes are not. Again, because there’s no state income tax, the burden of funding state government falls disproportionately on poor and middle-class folks. The poorest half of Texans pay more than 10 percent of their annual income on state and local taxes, according […]

CBS News Money Watch: Bernie Sanders: Amazon, Netflix are a “disgrace” for not paying taxes

April 16, 2019

The 60 companies that didn’t pay taxes last year, including tech giants such as Amazon and Netflix, relied on a number of legal strategies to eliminate their taxes, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. At the same time, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 […]

Wall Street Journal: Cuomo Paid Less Tax Under Federal Overhaul He Has Ripped

April 16, 2019

The 2017 tax law also lowered federal tax rates, narrowed the alternative minimum tax and increased the size of both the standard deduction and child tax credit. Because of these provisions, supporters of the law say many people will see their tax liability go down, even if they pay more than $10,000 in state and […]

Business Insider: Bernie Sanders says it’s a ‘disgrace’ that Amazon and Netflix pay nothing under Trump’s tax bill

April 16, 2019

A recent report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said Amazon used “tax loopholes that allow profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes.” Read more

Rolling Stone: Billions in Profits, No Taxes: How the Trump Tax Code Let 26 Companies Off the Hook

April 16, 2019

We knew President Trump’s 2017 tax bill favored corporate America, but this is ridiculous. According to a new study, a group of 60 companies in the Fortune 500 booked nearly $80 billion in total profits in 2018, but each owed $0 in taxes. Worse: Many of these companies actually got rebates from Uncle Sam, totaling […]

New York Post: Want to get out of taxes? Just make $79B

April 16, 2019

While millions of Americans had to cut Uncle Sam a check this year to pay their tax bill, 60 of the Fortune 500 companies paid zero taxes on their revenue, a new report finds. In 2018, 60 of America’s biggest corporations zeroed out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in US pretax income. Instead […]

Newark Star-Ledger: Tax Day 2019 More Taxing for 400k NJ Households

April 16, 2019

Only California, New York, Texas and Florida saw a greater number of households paying more in taxes, according to the report, based on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.  Read more

CBS Radio News: Taxes, the Why and How Much

April 15, 2019

ITEP senior fellow was featured on this Tax Day podcast. To listen, visit: https://www.newsweek.com/republican-tax-cuts-trump-wage-increases-879800

New York Times: Their Tax Rate Is Zero

April 15, 2019

Amazon. Delta Air Lines. Chevron. IBM. General Motors. Molson Coors. Eli Lilly. What do these companies have in common? They paid no federal taxes last year. Thanks to President Trump’s 2017 tax law, the number of Fortune 500 companies that pay no federal taxes roughly doubled last year, to 60, according to an analysis by […]

CNN: Four Ways Trump’s Tax Cuts Changed the Economy

April 15, 2019

Congress has yet to take up spending cuts to big-ticket items like Medicare and Social Security that the White House had proposed to curb deficits. Still, mounting debt makes conversations around future expenditures more difficult. Lawmakers have choked on passing a large infrastructure package, for example, because there’s no plan to pay for it. “In […]

New York Times: Face It, You Probably Got a Tax Cut

April 15, 2019

Other analyses reached similar conclusions. The Joint Committee on Taxation — Congress’s nonpartisan team of tax analysts — found that every income group would see a tax cut on average. So did the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank that was sharply critical of the law. In fact, that group went […]

WBUR On Point: When The IRS Is Gutted, It’s Low-Income Americans Who Are Hit Hardest

April 15, 2019

“At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero, on income earned on U.S. operations, according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The number is more than twice as many as ITEP […]

Bloomberg: Big Tech’s Big Tax Ruse: Industry Splurges on Buybacks

April 15, 2019

Spending on research and development climbed slightly. Capital expenditures rose because Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. almost doubled spending in that category. Apple Inc. and its partners have yet to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., as President Donald Trump had hoped. And there was no surge in tech hiring, according to data compiled by […]

Money: Happy Tax Day: Here Are 60 Giant Corporations That Paid Less in Taxes Than You Did

April 15, 2019

Tax Day 2019 is here! Monday, April 15, is when taxes are due, so you are probably keenly aware of how much you pay in taxes right now. It may come as a shock to also learn that some of America’s biggest corporations pay less in taxes than you do — in fact, they are […]

Yahoo! Finance: 9 Popular Companies that Paid $0 in Taxes for 2018

April 15, 2019

A new report reveals that some American companies didn’t just pay no taxes last year — they paid negative taxes. The report by D.C.-based think tank Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) looked at how Fortune 500 companies have been affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and found that 60 of America’s biggest […]

San Jose Mercury News: Which Bay Area Companies Didn’t Pay Federal Income Tax in 2018?

April 15, 2019

Corporations — they’re just like us. They, too, have to file income taxes every year. But unlike most of us, they have teams of accountants who can minimize their tax burden as much as possible. Three of the Bay Area’s Fortune 500 companies — Chevron, Netflix and Salesforce — paid no federal taxes in 2018, […]

Salt Lake Tribune: It’s Tax Day. If you’ve procrastinated, there are some things you should know

April 15, 2019

A recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says low- and middle-income Utahns pay an overall effective tax rate that is higher than the rate paid by upper-income residents for state and local taxes. For example, the top 1 percent of Utah income earners pay 6.7 percent of their income to state […]