Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

ITEP's Research Priorities

Daily Beast: Dear Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats: Why Are You Embracing Trickle-Down Economics?

November 19, 2018

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has found that from 2000 to 2018, the richest 20 percent of Americans have enjoyed 65 percent of all the tax cuts, with the remaining 35 percent of tax cuts were divided between the other 80 percent. The lesson from this finding is not that we should make […]

Splinter: House Democrats Balk at Prospect of Being Good

November 17, 2018

That is a disastrous idea. Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted the rule “could make it difficult, as a practical matter, to raise taxes—on the rich—without making the tax code a complicated mess. This is because few changes in the federal income tax would affect no one in […]

Lexington Herald Leader: Kentucky’s New Tax Favors for the Wealthy Won’t Spur the Economy. They Will Worsen Inequality.

November 16, 2018

Income inequality is soaring in an economy where the winners increasingly take all. The wealthiest one percent of Kentuckians make 94 times more a year on average than the bottom 20 percent. Despite that yawning gap, the state tax system is tilted in favor of those at the very top, as shown in a new […]

Slate: House Democrats Are Already Pursuing a Dumb Tax Stunt, and the Left Is Very Annoyed

November 16, 2018

But then, tucked at the bottom of page five, there’s an item that’s already setting off alarm bells across the left. The rule—endorsed by Pelosi and Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee—would “require a three-fifths supermajority to raise individual income taxes on the lowest-earning 80 percent of taxpayers.” The […]

Washington Post: Democrats Face Early Division in Rules over Taxes

November 16, 2018

The richest fifth of taxpayers are those who make more than $108,000 annually, said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Some liberal Democrats said that if the party limits its own ability to raise taxes, it could make it harder for the House to adopt policies […]

Wyo File: Why Are We Footing the Bill for Billionaires?

November 16, 2018

he question, then, will be: Who pays? That question — “Who pays?” — is also at the center of a report released last month by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The report, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, looks at the different tax rates […]

Bloomberg: U.S. Companies Flee No-Tax Caribbean Havens after EU Crackdown

November 16, 2018

Facebook Inc. has said it plans to almost triple its workforce in Singapore. The social media giant only reports Irish and Singapore subsidiaries, according to a 2017 study by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

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House Democrats Falter with Proposed Rule to Restrict Tax Hikes

November 16, 2018 • By Alan Essig

House Democrats Falter with Proposed Rule to Restrict Tax Hikes

Democratic leaders have proposed rules to be adopted in the next Congress, and many of them, such as eliminating the requirement for “dynamic scoring,” are very sensible. But one of the proposed rules is problematic because it would make it harder to raise revenue.

CBS News: Can New York Make Back Its Amazon Investment

November 14, 2018

Opponents of corporate subsidies said Amazon’s choices prove taxpayer incentives matter much less than advertised. “[A]ccess to an educated workforce and high-quality public amenities are what drive business location decisions — not the presence of low or regressive taxes,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said in a statement. “These cross-state bidding wars are […]

Real News Network: Even for Local Taxes, the Rich Pay Far Less Than the Poor

November 14, 2018

  Dylan Grundman, an ITEP senior policy analyst, discusses Who Pays.

Yahoo! Finance: How Trump’s Tax Cuts Hurt the GOP in America’s Wealthy Suburbs

November 12, 2018

Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told Yahoo Finance that the same story has been playing out across the country. “I think Californians and New Yorkers are right to feel that they didn’t get an especially good deal out of that tax overhaul,” Davis said. “Their tax cuts, relative […]

Washington Post: In blow to liberal efforts, voters across the country reject tax increases. (California is the exception.)

November 7, 2018

North Carolina voters, for instance, approved a change to their state constitution bringing down the maximum allowable tax rate from 10 percent to 7 percent. That will effectively only spare the rich from higher taxes, because no tax increases in that neighborhood are on the table for the middle class, but the average voter may […]

Governing: Voters Lower Cap on Income Tax in North Carolina

November 6, 2018

Still, many worry that locking down North Carolina’s income tax rates will hamstring future policymakers’ ability to raise revenue. North Carolina is one of a handful of states that has prioritized tax cuts over restoring education funding since the recession ended in 2009. It also is among states that saw teacher protests this spring over […]

Washington Post: Threat of Arizona Tax Measure Brings Together Liberals, Koch Brothers

November 6, 2018

(Meg Wiehe, a tax specialist at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, argued the sales tax is passed on to the consumers and that these businesses are not “double taxed.”) Gullett also said that the organization “has received enormous support from the Arizona Association of Realtors,” calling the group “consistent defenders of consumers.” … […]

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Amazon HQ2 Finalists Should Disclose the Financial Incentives They Promised

November 6, 2018 • By Guest Blogger

Amazon HQ2 Finalists Should Disclose the Financial Incentives They Promised

The Crystal City and Long Island City subsidy offers are among the many Amazon HQ2 bids that remain completely hidden. Citizens have no idea what their elected officials have promised to a company headed by the richest person on earth.

The Hill: IRS Sparks New Fight Over School Donations

November 4, 2018

However, other groups at the hearing, including representatives of public schools and the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), defended the application of the IRS guidance to the tax-credit scholarship programs. They argued that there is evidence that these programs had been advertised as tax shelters before the 2017 tax law. “This regulation […]

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Poorest 20 Percent Pays a 50 Percent Higher Effective State and Local Tax Rate than the Top 1 Percent

October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

Poorest 20 Percent Pays a 50 Percent Higher Effective State and Local Tax Rate than the Top 1 Percent

A comprehensive 50-state study released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) finds that most state and local tax systems tax low- and middle-income households at significantly higher rates than wealthy taxpayers, with the lowest-income households paying an average of 50 percent more of their income in taxes than the very rich.

Fiscal Times: What Trump’s Family Finances Tell Us About the Tax System

October 3, 2018

“The key takeaway,” said Alan Essig, director of the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “is that the wealthy and powerful abide by a different set of rules than the rest of us. … During his presidential campaign, President Trump called for closing the types of loopholes that allow some wealthy people to get […]

The New Yorker: The Trump Family’s Tax Dodging Is Symptomatic of a Larger Problem

October 3, 2018

This experience points to an enduring scandal that goes well beyond the Trumps. “The key takeaway from the New York Times article . . . is that the wealthy and powerful abide by a different set of rules than the rest of us,” Alan Essig, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan […]

The Post and Courier: Some Valuable Downtown Charleston Land Now Comes with Tax Breaks

October 2, 2018

“Even if the tax breaks drive some new investment into low-income areas, this does not guarantee that these investments will ultimately benefit low-income families within the opportunity zones,” said the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “In fact, additional investment driven by opportunity zones could have the unintended effect of fueling higher real estate prices […]

Politico: Morning Tax

October 1, 2018

Today also marks 25 years since the last federal gas tax increase, which was raised to its current 18.3 cents per gallon in 1993. Plenty of people have talked about hiking the gas tax again over the last quarter-century — even potentially President Donald Trump — without much success, as Republicans have largely opposed the […]

NJ.com: Murphy Pushes Plan to Save Property Tax Breaks

September 26, 2018

Only residents of New York, Connecticut, and California deduct more from federal taxes than New Jerseyans, according the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Most of the states hit hardest send billions of dollars more to Washington than they get back in services. Read more

Law360: Permanent Tax Cuts Favor Richest in All But Three States

September 25, 2018

The second round of tax cuts passed Thursday and Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives would overwhelmingly favor the richest Americans, except for those in three high-tax states, according to… Read more

Bloomberg BNA: Understanding the Post-Tax Cuts Buybacks Surge: A Primer

September 21, 2018

But Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the anger over buybacks stems from the idea that, with the passage of the tax law (Pub. L. No. 115-97), Americans “were promised something else” by lawmakers and the administration. Real wage growth, he added, is “flat as a […]

Chicago Magazine: Illinois Is a Few Elections Away From a Graduated Income Tax

September 21, 2018

Illinois has one of the most regressive tax systems in the nation — and politicians are taking notice. Under our system, the burden of taxation falls disproportionately on those least able to pay it. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Illinois is one of the “Terrible Ten Most Regressive State & Local Tax Systems,” clocking in […]