Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

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

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 […]

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