Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

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 […]

Minnesota Public Radio: Are Minnesotans Happy with President Trump’s Tax Cuts?

April 15, 2019

Carl Davis, ITEP’s research director, participated in this half-hour segment on how the public feels about the 2017 Trump-GOP tax cuts. Listen  here or get more info here: https://www.mprnews.org/listen?name=/minnesota/podcasts/kerri-miller/2019/04/15tax_day_20190415_64.mp3

blog  

Some Helpful Facts for Tax Day 2019

April 15, 2019 • By Alan Essig

Some Helpful Facts for Tax Day 2019

For Tax Day, ITEP has released several new reports that tell a broad story about our nation’s federal, state and local tax systems, providing important details about taxes we all pay and research on the tax-paying habits of Fortune 500 corporations. And of course, we have a trove of other tax policy resources.

Hill Reporter: Corporations Getting Hundreds Of Millions In Tax Rebates, Thanks Mainly To Trump

April 14, 2019

At least 60 companies reportedly owed nothing on their federal taxes for the year 2018, according to research compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That number is twice as much as the previous year’s findings. The report found that the companies identified by ITEP were collectively “able to zero out their federal […]

Connecticut Post: Pot Tax Rate Key to Driving Down Illegal Market in Conn.

April 14, 2019

But potency-based taxation requires good laboratories and technology to accurately test THC levels, said Uetake who teaches marketing at Yale’s School of Management. “Reliability and replicability of testing remain problematic,” wrote Carl Davis, Misha E. Hill and Richard Phillips of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in a 2019 policy paper. “Cannabis testing laboratories […]

The Intercept: Don’t Fall for the Right’s Favorite Lie About Taxes

April 13, 2019

So what does the overall U.S. tax system look like when you take all of this into account? The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, is the only organization that studies this in detail. Each year, they publish a report called “Who Pays Taxes in America?” This […]

CBS News: 60 of America’s Biggest Companies Paid no Federal Income Tax in 2018

April 12, 2019

Big companies have long relied on strategies to reduce their tax bills. But the new tax law is making it even easier, with a new analysis finding that 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies paid no taxes on a total of $79 billion of profits earned in 2018. The companies, which include tech giants such as […]

New York Times: Let Undocumented Immigrants Drive

April 12, 2019

There are an estimated 725,000 undocumented immigrants in New York State, making up more than 5 percent of the labor force in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. They pay $1.1 billion in state and local taxes each year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates. Read more

Virginia Business Magazine: Dominion, PFG, Gannett paid no federal income taxes in 2018

April 12, 2019

Some of Virginia’s biggest companies did not pay any federal income tax this year, according to a new report from a nonpartisan think tank. Dominion Energy, Performance Food Group and Gannett paid no federal income tax for 2018 U.S. income, a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows. The companies did […]

Sacramento Observer: California Must Champion the Working Class

April 12, 2019

Aside from major expenses, such as the skyrocketing cost of housing, exacerbating the problem is California’s high regressive taxes, such as those on sales and gasoline. Lower-income workers pay a disproportionately higher amount of their income on regressive taxes – hurting their ability to support themselves in expensive areas across the state. According to the […]

Think Progress: Trump Tax ‘Cut’ Actually Increased Taxes for 10 Million American Families, Report Finds

April 12, 2019

The Center for American Progress released its calculations on Friday, based on data from the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It found that 10,260,263 American families saw a tax hike last year, thanks to the president’s 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. (ThinkProgress in an editorially independent news site housed at the Center […]

Paste Magazine: Meet the 60 Giant Corporations Who Didn’t Pay a Dime in Federal Taxes Under Trump’s Plan

April 12, 2019

As someone who just came face-to-face with his 2018 tax bill this very morning, and whose hands have stopped shaking just enough to accurately pound the keys on this keyboard, the information I’m about to convey is somewhere between “vexing” and “wildly infuriating,” and is only somewhat mitigated by the fact that the injustice is […]

Yahoo! Finance: Not Just Amazon: 60 Big Companies Paid $0 in Taxes under Trump Law

April 12, 2019

Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%). That’s more than three […]