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Hearing Witness: Trump Administration Giving Tax Breaks Not Allowed by Law
• By Steve Wamhoff
The Treasury Department, tasked with issuing regulations to implement the hastily drafted Trump-GOP tax law, is concocting new tax breaks that are not provided in the law. This is the short version of what we learned while watching Tuesday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax.”
Trends We’re Watching in 2020
• By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers have plenty to keep them busy on the tax policy front in 2020. Encouraging trends we’re watching this year include opportunities to enact and enhance refundable tax credits and increase the tax contributions of high-income households, each of which would improve tax equity and help to reduce income inequality.
Why Today’s Congressional Hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax” Is Imperative
• By Steve Wamhoff
The United States is collecting a historically low level of tax revenue from corporations. In 2018, corporate tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product (the nation’s economic output) dipped to 1 percent and reached just 1.1 percent in 2019. The only other times in the last 40 years that tax collections were this […]
President Trump’s 2021 Budget: Promises Made, Promises Broken
• By Steve Wamhoff
President Trump has kept only one of his promises--his pledge to lower taxes for corporations and their investors. The budget plan he released today again breaks his promise to reject cuts in Medicaid that would affect millions of people. His budget once again fails to eliminate the deficit, much the less the national debt, during his presidency as he promised. It cuts trillions from safety net programs and student aid programs despite his pledge…
States Can Make Their Tax Systems Less Regressive by Reforming or Repealing Itemized Deductions
• By Carl Davis
Itemized deductions are problematic tax subsidies that need to close. The mortgage interest deduction, for instance, is often lauded as a way to help middle-class families afford homes and charitable deductions are touted as incentivizing gifts to charitable organizations. But the dirty little secret is that itemized deductions primarily benefit higher-income households while largely failing to achieve their purported goals.
Trump Already Did Tax Cuts 2.0… For Corporations
• By Steve Wamhoff
If President Trump puts forth another tax proposal this year, as he is hinting, it will be his third. The second round, already costing the U.S. Treasury billions, was implemented largely out of the public’s view.
Washington Is Finally Having the Right Conversation about Taxes
• By Amy Hanauer
Presidential candidates and some elected officials are finally talking about bold tax policy ideas that would increase taxes and raise revenue. This is a dramatic shift from when a radical, right-wing narrative dominated the public debate. Republicans redefined “fiscal responsibility” as fewer taxes and less government, peddled supply-side economic theories, and denied the clear evidence that tax cuts were adding to our nation’s deficits.
From 0% to 1.2%: Amazon Lauds Its Minuscule Effective Federal Income Tax Rate
• By Matthew Gardner
If we focus on the taxes the company paid in 2019, we see an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.2 percent. And since the company enjoyed federal income tax rebates in 2017 and 2018, this means that over the last three years Amazon has paid zero on $29 billion of U.S. pretax income.
State Rundown 1/30: Flip-Flops and Steady Marches in State Tax Debates
• By ITEP Staff
State tax and budget debates can turn on a dime sometimes, as in Utah this past week, where lawmakers unanimously repealed a tax package they had just approved in a special session last month. Delaware lawmakers are hoping to avoid the similarly abrupt end to their last effort to improve their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by crafting a bill that Gov. John Carney will have no reason to unexpectedly veto as he did two years ago. But at other times, these debates just can’t change fast…
ITEP Urges IRS to End SALT Workaround Scheme for Businesses
• By Carl Davis
A new IRS proposal could once again allow wealthy business owners to use state charitable tax credits–including tax credits for donating to support private and religious K-12 schools–to dodge the federal government’s $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
GOP Legacy on IRS Administration: Auditing Mississippi, not Microsoft
• By Matthew Gardner
Money doesn’t buy happiness—but it can buy immunity from the reach of Uncle Sam. The IRS is outgunned in cases against corporate giants because that’s how Republican leaders want it to be. They have systematically assaulted the agency’s enforcement capacity through decades of funding cuts. Instead of saving money, these cuts have cost billions: each dollar spent on the IRS results in several dollars of tax revenue collected.
State Rundown 1/22: “Only Light Can Do That”
• By ITEP Staff
This week as Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s messages of resisting oppression and fighting for progress, state policymakers can look to some bright spots where tax and budget debates are bending toward justice. Among those highlights, Hawaii leaders are considering improvements to minimum wage policy, early childhood education, and affordable housing; Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is seeking to reduce sales taxes applied to food and restore the state’s grocery tax credit; and advocates in…
Why I’ve Joined the Fight for Tax Justice: Amy Hanauer
• By Amy Hanauer
After years of watching tax policy increasingly leave communities behind, at ITEP I’ll have the chance to work with local, state and national partners on policy solutions. I’m prepared to push for a tax system that can better deliver economic, climate and racial justice; for a public sector that can prepare our kids and our grid for 2020 and beyond; and for an America that works for all of us, whether we were born in…
State Rundown 1/15: State Tax Proposals Are All Over the Map
• By ITEP Staff
State tax and budget debates have arrived in a big way, with proposals from every part of the country and everywhere on the spectrum from good to bad tax policy. Just look to ARIZONA for a microcosm of nationwide debates, where education advocates have a plan to raise progressive taxes for school needs, Gov. Doug […]
The 2013 Biden-McConnell “Fiscal Cliff” Deal Shows Why the Next President Needs a New Approach to Taxes
• By Steve Wamhoff
Americans have long wanted more progressive tax policies and have told pollsters for years that they want wealthy individuals and big corporations to pay more, not less, in taxes. The only way forward is for lawmakers and the next president to take a dramatically different approach to tax policy.
White House Council of Economic Advisers Crows about Lowest-Income Americans Being Infinitesimally “Wealthier”
• By Matthew Gardner
When the White House Council of Economic Advisors last week tweeted that the poorest 50 percent of Americans’ wealth is growing 3 times faster than the wealth of the top 1 percent, we were skeptical. As it turns out, the CEA’s tweet is a reminder that the poorest 50 percent wealth grew twice as fast during Barack Obama’s second term than it has under Trump, but to this day remains far below its pre-recession share…
Time to Throw Cucumbers
• By Steve Wamhoff
A basic understanding and idea of fairness is a trait we share with intelligent primates, which is precisely why more than two years ago as Congress was debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the American public disapproved of the tax bill.
State Rundown 1/8: States Need Clear Tax and Budget Policy Vision in 2020
• By ITEP Staff
Happy New Year readers! The Rundown is back to our usual weekly schedule as state legislative sessions and governors’ budgets and State of the State Addresses begin in earnest. Here’s to clear-eyed 20-20 vision guiding state tax and budget decisions in 2020! So far this year, the harm of Colorado’s TABOR policy and Alaska’s lack of an income tax are coming into focus in big ways. Utah advocates are hoping the benefit of hindsight will…
Guilty, Not GILTI: Unclear Whether Corps Continue to Lower Their Tax Bills Via Tax Haven Abuse
• By Matthew Gardner
President Trump and GOP lawmakers often cited corporations’ abuse of tax havens, e.g. shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes, as justification for dramatically lowering the federal corporate tax rate under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By 2016, corporations’ offshore cash haul had grown to $2.6 trillion, representing hundreds of billions in lost federal tax […]
Corporate Tax Avoidance Is Mostly Legal—and That’s the Problem
• By Steve Wamhoff
As usual, corporate spokespersons and their allies are trying to push back against ITEP’s latest study showing that many corporations pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. One way they respond is by stating that everything they do is perfectly legal. This is an attempt by the corporate world to change the subject. The entire point of ITEP’s study is that Congress has allowed corporations to avoid paying taxes, and that this must change.
State Rundown 12/18: Utah’s Tax Fight Wraps Up As Other States’ Ramp Up
• By ITEP Staff
With the new year and many state legislative sessions just around the corner, most state tax and budget debates are just getting started. Arkansas will be among the states working to improve their roads and other infrastructure. Massachusetts will have to deal with revenue losses due to a misguided tax-cut trigger put in place in prior years. Maryland and South Dakota will be two of many states facing teacher pay shortages and other education funding…
For the Holiday Wishlist: Child Tax Credit Improvements That Would Lift Millions Out of Poverty
• By Aidan Davis
A recent New York Times article serves as a stark reminder that child poverty remains a persistent problem in this country and that the policies we have in place to help this vulnerable population need immediate attention and improvement.
Why Corporate Tax Avoidance Matters
• By Lorena Roque
Corporate tax avoidance boosts companies’ bottom lines, and this benefits the owners of corporate stocks, which are mostly concentrated in the hands of the well-off. The cost of corporate tax dodging is borne by everyone, in several different ways.
More of the Same: Corporate Tax Avoidance Hasn’t Changed Much Under Trump-GOP Tax Law
• By Matthew Gardner
A new report from ITEP released today shows that, based on the first year of financial reports released by companies operating under the new tax law, tax avoidance appears to be every bit as much of a problem under the new tax system as it was before the Trump tax law took effect.
New ITEP Reports Call for the Repeal of Opportunity Zones and Urge States to Decouple
• By Lorena Roque
Two new ITEP reports lay bare the irreparable flaws of the federal Opportunity Zones program, created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by President Trump in 2017.
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