Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

CBS News: Trump’s Economic Score: After Tax Cuts, Not too Much

January 23, 2018

The tax plan aims to pump $1.5 trillion worth of breaks into the nation’s economy over the next 10 years. Although the bulk of the benefits go to companies and the wealthy, ordinary folks will get something, too. The average tax reduction for the middle fifth of American taxpayers by income will be $800 in […]

Washington Examiner: New Tax Law Means Tax Hikes in Iowa Unless State Intervenes

January 23, 2018

he timing is auspicious because, for years, some conservatives in the state have resisted the idea of eliminating the deduction out of a fear that doing so would be a tax increase. But such worries don’t apply now, because the federal tax cuts are lowering the deduction’s value to the tune of $130 million to […]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In Assessing the Fairness of Tax Cuts, Don’t Forget Income Inequality

January 20, 2018

The basic problem, the Post said, was McCaskill’s use of the phrase “in the long run.” Next year, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the vast majority of Missourians will see a tax cut. The middle 20 percent of households will see an average cut of $830, which is why Republicans can […]

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Olympics-like Bidding for Amazon’s HQ2 Is a PR Stunt Meant to Extract Tax Subsidies

January 19, 2018 • By Guest Blogger

By Greg LeRoy Amazon.com’s announcement of a 20-site “short list” for its second headquarters, or “HQ2” location, is provoking a public backlash that could reshape how economic development is done in the United States. In one sense, Amazon is continuing to behave as predicted, staging a public-relations stunt apparently to extract the largest possible subsidies […]

NPR’s All Things Considered: More States Turning To Toll Roads To Raise Cash For Infrastructure

January 18, 2018

“I think the states over time have lost hope in the federal government enacting a real, long-term infrastructure package” says Carl Davis, research director for the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “And so they’ve taken matters in their own hands and boosted funding on their own.” Davis notes that 26 states have increased […]

Fortune: States Are Trying to Fix the New Tax Law, But They May Make It Worse

January 18, 2018

Below is an excerpt of an op-ed that was published in Fortune by ITEP Senior Fellow Steve Wamhoff Two wrongs don’t make a right. But some state officials, incensed by the new federal tax law’s $10,000 limit on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), appear to have forgotten this sage advice and are considering […]

New York Times: Apple, Capitalizing on New Tax Law, Plans to Bring Billions in Cash Back to U.S.

January 18, 2018

By shifting the money under the new terms, Apple has saved $43 billion in taxes, more than any other American company, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group in Washington. Other tech giants are set to follow suit in the coming months. Companies like Microsoft, Alphabet and Cisco also shifted […]

BBC: Apple to Pay $38 Billion on Foreign Cash Pile

January 18, 2018

Apple is to bring billions of dollars back to the US, and pay a $38bn tax bill as a result. We get analysis from Thomas Brennan, a law professor specialising in tax policy at Harvard University, and Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Washington research group the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

City & State: Cuomo’s Tax Work Arounds Would Be Challenging

January 17, 2018

Steve Wamhoff, senior fellow for federal tax policy at the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, gave the example that if a person gave $100 to a public radio station and received a mug in return, they would have to subtract the value of the mug when listing the deduction on their federal taxes. […]

Albany Times-Union: States Release Plans to Shift from Income to Payroll Taxes

January 17, 2018

But the concept has sparked questions from both sides of the political spectrum. “You are making the state code increasingly complicated and for what?” said Steve Wamhoff, a senior tax policy fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington D.C. progressive-leaning group that looks at tax issues such as fairness. Wamhoff notes […]

Charleston Post-Courier: An Abuse of Charitable Giving?

January 14, 2018

Under the new law, some wealthy South Carolinians may actually make a 37 percent profit, risk-free, by making charitable contributions to Exceptional SC, a nonprofit fund created by the state Legislature to administer scholarships to students with disabilities attending private schools. That’s according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. South Carolina has […]

New York Times: Walmart’s Bumpy Day: From Wage Increase to Store Closings

January 12, 2018

Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research group, said it was difficult to forecast precisely how much Walmart would save. But based on the company’s average annual United States earnings over the past five years, he said, savings from the cut in the corporate tax rate […]

Bloomberg: Trump’s SALT `War’ Revisited: Most Blue Staters Will Get Tax Cut

January 12, 2018

n blue New Jersey, for instance, the new law will raise taxes on about 285,000 filers earning between $79,890 and $336,620, with a typical hike of about $1,400, according to an analysis by the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. However, more than 1.2 million New Jerseyans in the same income range will get a […]

New York Magazine: California, New Jersey, and New York Designing Workarounds to Blunt GOP Tax Bill Impact

January 12, 2018

In a memo released in 2011, the Internal Revenue Service gave its blessing for taxpayers to claim federal deductions on those gifts. The combination of a 100 percent state-tax credit and a federal deduction actually makes the gifts profitable for some donors, said Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. […]

CNNMoney: How the Federal Tax Overhaul Could Reshape State Budgets

January 12, 2018

Meg Wiehe, deputy director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said she’s noticed a trend over the past year toward more aggressive taxation of companies and high-income people, ever since Kansas backtracked on a high-profile experiment with eliminating taxes on pass-through companies that led to a plunge in revenue. Despite the challenges […]

USA Today: High-Tax States Plot Ways to Get Around New Limit on Federal Tax Deductions

January 12, 2018

But a more liberal group, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, reported last year how financial advisers have advertised how taxpayers could make a profit by giving to funds in other states that support private school tuition vouchers. Read more

Yahoo Finance: Democrats Downplay Bonuses Employees Are Getting In Wake Of GOP Tax Law

January 12, 2018

But it’s worth noting that PEPCO, which was acquired by Exelon Corp. in 2016, paid an effective tax rate of negative 27.9 from 2008 to 2015 partly because of various credits and refunds from the government, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Many other corporations similarly pay less in […]

Washington Post: Is the Trump Tax Cut Good or Bad for the Middle-Class?

January 12, 2018

A state-by-state analysis produced by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal-leaning group, show the vast majority will get some kind of tax cut in Missouri in 2019, but then as much of a third will experience tax increases in 2027. Even more striking is how even the tax cuts shrink. In the […]

Politico: The Progressive Skepticism on the SALT Run-Arounds:

January 12, 2018

The progressive skepticism on the SALT run-arounds: The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has a new paper that says it’s understandable why states would try to make sure residents don’t face a tax hike under what it believes to be a horribly flawed law. But ITEP adds that most taxpayers facing the new cap […]

Time: Walmart Shocked Employees By Closing Dozens of Sam’s Club Stores. Here’s What We Know

January 12, 2018

And how much richer will Walmart be in light of the new tax law the company is crediting as the big reason for raises and bonuses for workers? Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told the New York Times that based on Walmart’s earnings over the past five […]

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Using Private Debt Collectors as a Substitute for the IRS Is a Bad Deal

January 11, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner

If President Trump is indeed a deal maker, then he should dismantle Congress’s decision to rely on private debt collectors as a substitute for the Internal Revenue Service. This decision, championed for years by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Chuck Schumer, D-New York, is a lousy deal for everyone--American taxpayers, the federal government--except private debt collectors.

The Hill: Why You Shouldn’t Pay Attention to What Companies Say about Their Tax Bills

January 9, 2018

Following in an excerpt from an op-ed by ITEP Senior Fellow Matthew Gardner that appear in The Hill: A flurry of announcements by corporate giants such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Express and others are informing their shareholders of expected “losses” in 2018 because of the new tax law’s requirement that they pay taxes […]

Salon: Apple’s Biggest Innovation Isn’t Gadgets. It’s Dodging Taxes

January 9, 2018

Why would so many American companies register themselves in the Caymans? Elementary. American tax law allows corporations to defer paying taxes on profits earned overseas, until those profits are repatriated back home. So here’s what you do, if you’re a major corporation. You set up a subsidiary in a tax haven. You hide your domestic […]

The Fiscal Times: More States Are Turning to Toll Roads

January 9, 2018

Nineteen states have waited a decade or more since last increasing their gas tax rates. Another 13 states have gone at least two decades, and three states — Alaska, Oklahoma and Mississippi — have not increased their gas tax rates since the 1980s, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank […]

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New Tax Law Allows Affluent Taxpayers to Write off K-12 Private School Tuition

January 9, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner

Taxpayers are still learning about the intended and unintended consequences of the major tax overhaul that Republican leaders ramrodded through late last year. One little-noted provision subverts state laws that prohibit the use of public dollars for private schools by allowing taxpayers to use 529 plans to pay for K-12 tuition. Until last year, the […]