Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP's Research Priorities

Vox: Undocumented Immigrants Pay Taxes Too: Here’s How They Do It

April 19, 2017

Unauthorized workers aren’t eligible for benefits like the earned income tax credit — which is what the green box on the screen was warning Gonzalez about. Nor can they get Social Security or Medicare. But the IRS still wants unauthorized immigrants to file their taxes, and many of them do. The best estimates from the […]

Forbes: A Tax Day Note to Corporate America: Pay Your Fair Share

April 18, 2017

Of course, few, if any, corporations actually pay taxes at that rate. Earlier this spring, a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showed that, between 2008 and 2015, Fortune 500 corporations paid an effective federal tax rate of 21.2% on average. Many pay far less, and some pay nothing at all. […]

Mother Jones: Thanks to Trump, These Taxpayers May Avoid the IRS

April 18, 2017

There is a widely held misconception that undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes. However, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C. think tank, roughly half of undocumented immigrants pay taxes using the IRS’ Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) program. The program is intended for nonimmigrant visa holders, contract workers, investors, and students. But many […]

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Resources for Tax Day 2017

April 13, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

Federal and state taxes are a contentious point of policy debate all year round but are especially salient in the minds of most Americans as Tax Day approaches. This year, people across the country will take to the streets in cities across the nation to demand President Donald Trump release his tax returns. This isn’t […]

The Fiscal Times: Tax-Free Shopping on Amazon Is Over

April 11, 2017

As recently as 2011, Amazon was collecting sales tax in just five states, home to 11 percent of the country’s population, according to Carl Davis of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. But a few years ago, as Amazon began to pursue a strategy of expanding its network of distribution and data centers to improve its […]

Charleston Gazette-Mail: Cutting WV Income Tax Likely to Backfire

April 11, 2017

There are nine states with no income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, New Hampshire and Tennessee. Only Texas has seen job growth — as a result of being the center of the oil industry. The others have not; job growth has trailed population growth in the other eight. This is based […]

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Is a flat tax right for Georgia?

April 11, 2017

That’s the problem Tharpe has with studies like the Wallethub.com survey. That 50-state look at state taxes found Georgia has a tax burden of 8.2 percent of individual personal income. The Washington, DC,-based financial services website ranked Georgia slightly better than Arizona and just behind Washington state. When I tweeted out those findings, Tharpe was quick to […]

Connecticut Post: These two big Connecticut companies avoided taxes for years

April 11, 2017

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, D.C. analyzed 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies and found that 100 of them paid no taxes at least one year between 2008 and 2015.   Eighteen of these corporations, including General Electric and Priceline, paid zero total income tax over the eight-year period, the study showed. […]

The Minneapolis Start-Trubine: The Tax Fairness Gap is gone

April 11, 2017

But if states can compete on tax fairness, Minnesota is positioned to do well. The national Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranked Minnesota the fifth-fairest state in the country in 2014 for taxing those at higher incomes at nearly the same effective rate as the poor. It praised Minnesota not only for raising its […]

Chicago Tribune: Family finances: How a border tax would affect you

April 11, 2017

But economists at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan research group, say the adjustment overall could take years, and in the meantime, at least some portion of the tax would be passed on to consumers. Read more

Minnesota Post: Health of Twin Cities lakes at risk from salt

April 11, 2017

The national Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranked Minnesota the fifth-fairest state in the country in 2014 for taxing those at higher incomes at nearly the same effective rate as the poor.” Read more

Boston Globe: Some See Risks Rising for Undocumented Who Pay Their Taxes

April 2, 2017

In total, they paid $23.6 billion in federal taxes, according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an arm of the Internal Revenue Service. Separately, undocumented workers pay nearly $12 billion in state and local taxes per year, according to a March report by the nonprofit Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy in Washington, D.C. In Massachusetts […]

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New Analysis Compares Tax Rates Paid by Companies Lobbying for/against Border Adjustment Tax

March 31, 2017 • By Matthew Gardner

An Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis finds that, on average, companies that are opposed to the Border Adjustment Tax pay higher tax rates than a coalition of companies lobbying against the tax. The Border Adjustment Tax or BAT is being proposed as part of a broader GOP plan to overhaul the corporate tax […]

The San Diego Union Tribune: Sempra has paid no corporate taxes in recent years … and it’s all legal

March 31, 2017

According to figures compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a left-of-center group based in Washington D.C., between 2008 and 2015 Sempra earned $7 billion in profit but actually received $34 million back in federal taxes, equating to an effective tax rate of minus 0.5 percent. “Sempra looks to me like a […]

Christian Science Monitor: After years of fighting states, Amazon makes sales tax standard

March 31, 2017

Regardless of the motivation for the move, tax experts applaud the decision to make state sales tax collection standard. “This expansion in Amazon’s tax collection practices represents a step forward for rational sales tax policy,” Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote on March 21. Read more

Philadelphia Inquirer: BAT Bad News for Pennsylvania

March 31, 2017

Furthermore, any attempt to tax imports will likely be retaliated against in other countries by enacting similar trade measures that boost their own exports and penalize U.S. imports. In a recent interview, Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said, “The question is whether that would just mean a […]

Bloomberg BNA: States May Eye Health Care Flop as Harbinger on Tax Reform

March 31, 2017

Whatever happens on taxes at the federal level, a debate on how Congress might or should broaden the base of what’s taxable is likely to occur, and that will be positive, Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said at the Tax Foundation event. “It’ll be a good thing […]

The Seattle Times: Boeing Paid Federal Taxes

March 31, 2017

Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which lobbies for tax fairness, said Boeing “continues finding new bases for postponing taxes.” “Boeing’s prodigious capacity to keep generating deferred tax liabilities means that in any given year, its effective tax rate is very, very low.” The tax data from […]

Salon: The rich pay fewer taxes than the poor, and get more services

March 31, 2017

The analysis starts with state and local taxes, which are often ignored by apologists for big-income tax cuts. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the state and local tax rate for the poorest 20 percent of individuals is double that of the top 1 percent (10.9 percent vs. 5.4 percent). New data from Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez […]

The Guardian: My undocumented friend: Carlos does the work few in Vermont want to do

March 31, 2017

While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump called CNN’s Erin Burnett “naive” for suggesting “illegal immigrants” pay taxes. But nationally, they contribute an estimated $11.64bn a year in just state and local taxes, with at least 50% of undocumented immigrant households filing tax returns, according to the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Vermont’s […]

St. Louis Public Radio: Proposition 1, a St. Louis ballot measure, regarding MetroLink, urban development funding

March 31, 2017

Newhouse cited a statistic from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that the bottom 20 percent of income earners in the state of Missouri pay 5.8 percent of their annual income in sales tax. “You want these people to have access to ride North/South MetroLink to have more opportunity, to get […]

International Business Times: Republican Health Care Plan: Trumpcare Gives Wealthiest 1% A $31B Taxcut

March 31, 2017

The wealthiest Americans will see the biggest benefit from the Republican plan to repeal the tax on investments and additional Medicare tax in the Republican American Health Care Act, a state-by-state analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy indicates, with California and the District of Columbia the biggest winners. The analysis indicated the […]

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Gas Tax Trivia Apropos for April Fool’s Day

March 29, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

April 1 will mark the longest-running streak that the federal gas tax has remained stagnant, a short analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reveals. Saturday will mark the 8,584th day (23.5 years) that the nation’s federal gasoline tax rate has remained at 18.3 cents per gallon. This surpasses the previous record of […]

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New 50-State Analysis of AHCA Tax Provisions

March 27, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

A new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis of tax provisions in the American Health Care Act provides a 50-state breakdown of how taxpayers would be affected by the Republican plan to repeal the net investment tax and additional Medicare tax, each of which apply only to the best-off Americans. Repealing these taxes would, […]

Washington Post: How a GOP tax plan would help Caterpillar after a raid by federal agents

March 22, 2017

“Caterpillar appears to have elevated international tax avoidance to an art form,” said Matt Gardner, the former director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “From that perspective, this plan is exactly backwards. It would leave the barn door wide open for companies like Caterpillar to continue shifting their profits on paper offshore.” […]