Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Boston Globe: What You Need to Know about the Most Recent Changes to the GOP Tax Bill

December 15, 2017

So when the standard deduction gets bigger, as it would under the Republican bill, itemizing will inevitably become more rare. Likely much more rare. Here in Massachusetts, the number of people expected to continue itemizing will drop from roughly 37 percent of filers to more like 13 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and […]

You’d have to subscribe to the bizarre, Orwellian theory that middle-income people’s economic anxiety will somehow be assuaged by watching the rich grow richer to believe that the pending plan is good for working families. But we’re not too far down the rabbit hole. Principled lawmakers can heed the calls of their constituents and vote, […]

Los Angeles Times: Let the Games Begin

December 14, 2017

In the compromise most recently reached by House and Senate Republicans, taxpayers would be able to deduct up to $10,000 in state and local taxes, including property taxes. That’s an improvement over some of the original proposals, which would have wiped out the deductions entirely, but not much of one. The share of California taxpayers […]

PBS: Working Long Hours Adds Hurdle for Undocumented Students

December 14, 2017

Currently, about 87 percent of the young people in the DACA program are employed, and America’s 1.3 million DACA-eligible youth, including those who haven’t enrolled, contribute an estimated $2 billion in state and local taxes, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. One of the express purposes of DACA, beyond […]

Reuters: Don’t Expect a Post-Card Size Tax Return

December 14, 2017

A key driver of this, according to independent analyzes, would be a proposed doubling of the standard deduction and a curtailment of the deduction for state and local tax payments. In combination, these two changes would mean that about 29 million people would no longer benefit from itemizing. So they would stop writing off their […]

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ITEP Statement on Alabama’s Special Election

December 13, 2017 • By Alan Essig

What voters want—the people who put elected officials in office—matters. Members of Congress should take pause before proceeding with their profoundly unpopular tax bill that the vast majority of voters have said lawmakers should not pass.

Boston Globe: Look our Wealthy Boston Suburbs, Here Comes the GOP Tax Bill

December 8, 2017

Most Massachusetts taxpayers would see their taxes go down in 2019, by an average of over $2,000. But a study by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy predicts that roughly 200,000 Massachusetts households earning between $83,000 and $333,000 would face higher taxes, with the average increase in 2019 approaching $1,500. Read more

CNBC: This Chart Shows How the GOP Tax Plan Will Hit Your Wallet

December 8, 2017

To better show the impact of these factors, analysts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy crunched the numbers and came up with an estimate of how individual households may fare under the new rules. These estimates aren’t definitive; the new rules are so complex that two taxpayers in the same neighborhood with the […]

Salon: There’s a Reason Why “Corporate America” May Be a Stretch

December 8, 2017

So when taxes of “American” corporations are cut, foreign investors get a windfall. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that the Senate majority’s tax bill would give foreign investors a tax cut of $31 billion in 2019. The House bill would give them $50.4 billion. That’s money that foreign investors would otherwise be […]

New Republic: Tax Reform to Own the Libs

December 8, 2017

According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California would pay $17 billion more in taxes by 2027, while Texas and Florida, two large states that Trump won, would pay $31 billion less. “You can definitely see the ideological tilt here,” Carl Davis, the institute’s research […]

Mother Jones: Republican Plan Threatens School Funding to Pay for Corporate Tax Cuts

December 8, 2017

In New Jersey, 41 percent of taxpayers write off state and local taxes, averaging a $17,200 deduction. In Texas, 22 percent deduct an average of $7,600 apiece. Taxes and the cost of living are high enough in some blue states that many middle-class taxpayers would see their taxes go up if SALT is repealed. In New Jersey, […]

Politifact: Paul Ryan’s partially accurate claim that House tax bill saves typical Wisconsin household $2,000

December 8, 2017

The $2,081 savings figure is correct, according to experts at four think tanks we contacted: Amir El-Sibaie, an analyst at the Tax Foundation; Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center senior fellow Frank Sammartino; and Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy deputy […]

Reuters: Millions Would Stop Bothering with Mortgage, Charity and Property Tax Deductions

December 8, 2017

Millions of households would no longer benefit from federal tax deductions for charity donations, mortgage interest payments and property tax under Republican tax plans being debated in the U.S. Congress, a think tank said on Thursday. The left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said that up to 29 million U.S. households now writing off […]

Inside Sources: GOP Tax Plan Is a Corporate Handout

December 5, 2017

Why are these corporate tax cuts considered “necessary,” when so many big corporations have been posting record profits and have an effective tax rate of less than 20 percent, or even 10 percent. Some corporations don’t pay any federal taxes at all. Yet an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy earlier this […]

They Can’t Help Themselves: GOP Leaders Reveal True Intent Behind Tax Overhaul

The hand-written scrawls in the margins of the hastily written 500-page Senate tax bill had barely dried when lawmakers began to reveal the true motivation behind their rush to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s tax code.

Senate Okays Unpopular Plan to Widen Income Inequality, Make the Rich Richer

But so far, Republican leaders have demonstrated that, for them, the only voices that matter in this debate are those that fund their campaigns.

New York Times: Trump Says GOP Tax Bill Won’t Benefit Him. That’s Not True

November 30, 2017

Mr. Trump still has not released his tax returns, so it’s impossible to know to what extent he would personally benefit from the legislation. But there’s little doubt that he would. “Lower pass-through rates and the repeal of the alternative minimum tax — those two alone are so hugely beneficial to Trump that I have […]

Wall Street Cheat Sheet: Ted Cruz Sure Loves the Top 1 Percent

November 30, 2017

Because he didn’t really elaborate, it’s hard to understand what Cruz was trying to say here. When Democrats say that the lionshare of the tax breaks in the Senate bill are going to the rich, they do not mean all taxpayers. They mean wealthy Americans. According to Sanders, 60% of the tax breaks in the […]

Quartz: The Republican tax plan takes aim at one of the biggest engines of US growth

November 30, 2017

As Los Angeles Times Jim Puzzanghera pointed out recently, California is already one of a handful of states that pays more to the federal government than it receives. The Republican plan currently being debated in the Senate is likely to make this imbalance even larger. While most of the country can expect to benefit from […]

KQED: UC Grad Students Join National Protest Against GOP Plans to Increase Their Taxes

November 29, 2017

Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the decision not to tax waived tuition fees is in line with standard taxation principles. The same logic is at work behind the reason why we don’t tax workers for employer-sponsored health insurance. “When you have income that you can’t really […]

The Atlantic: The Big Blue Losers in the GOP Tax Plan

November 28, 2017

Between the mortgage and SALT limits, the bills hit many upper-middle-class taxpayers, especially in blue states. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculates that by 2027 the Senate bill would raise taxes on about 45 percent of households between the 80th and 95th income percentiles in California, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York; and […]

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Luring corporate money from tax havens is a big unknown for reform proposals

November 27, 2017

U.S. companies booked 61 percent of foreign earnings in just 10 low-tax countries in 2014, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). In five of those countries — Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Luxembourg — American businesses claimed profits that exceeded the value of the nation’s […]

San Francisco Chronicle: GOP tax bills could shield multinationals’ future overseas profits

November 25, 2017

Currently, the U.S. government taxes foreign earnings at the same 35 percent corporate rate charged on domestic profits, but only when the foreign earnings are returned to the United States. Under the bills moving through Congress, overseas profits would be mostly excluded from U.S. taxation. Instead, those profits might be taxed by the nations where […]

Bloomberg: Should the Upper Middle Class Take the Biggest Tax Hit?

November 21, 2017

And maybe they should. Higher taxes on the upper middle class make sense to some liberal tax experts—but only if the proceeds are used the right way, they said, for things like better health care, more affordable college, and rebuilding infrastructure. Under the House bill, though, any new tax revenue is used to offset tax […]

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Resources for Your Thanksgiving Dinner Tax Policy Debates

November 21, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

Resources for Your Thanksgiving Dinner Tax Policy Debates

ITEP has analyzed each of the tax proposals advanced by the House and Senate in recent weeks. While some details have changed, the bottom line is the same: The plans would disproportionately benefit corporations and the wealthy. The Senate tax plan ITEP’s latest analysis examined the proposal that passed the Senate Finance Committee on Nov. […]