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State Rundown 5/22: When One Legislative Session Closes, Another Opens
May 22, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
State legislatures are wrapping up, but don’t stray too far from your state capital or you’ll miss out on the action...
There are a variety of factors that affect teacher pay. But one often overlooked factor is progressive tax policies that allow states to raise and provide the funding educators and their students deserve.
Uncertainty abounds in state tax debates lately...
This week, special sessions with major tax implications are in the air...
Iowa Flat Tax Shows Why Such Policies Are a Problem Everywhere
May 9, 2024 • By Eli Byerly-Duke
As Iowa lawmakers change the state’s graduated personal income tax to a single flat rate, they are designing a state tax code where the rich will pay a lower rate overall than families with modest means.
This week, many states took steps toward enacting tax cuts...
Increased information transfer from the IRS would improve the quality of data at the Census Bureau and expand opportunities for tax policy research. This is critical for researchers who rely on Census Bureau data and products to fill the informational gaps present in tax data.
Many state legislative sessions are wrapping up...
Tax History Matters: A Q&A with Professor Andrew Kahrl, Author of ‘The Black Tax’
April 24, 2024 • By Brakeyshia Samms
In his new book, The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America, Professor Andrew Kahrl walks readers through the history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.
TurboTax Maker Puts a Pink Spin on Exploitative Financial Products
April 22, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer
This op-ed originally appeared in MSNBC Tax preparation behemoth Intuit (maker of TurboTax) recently unveiled a new campaign branding itself as a feminist company. “When it comes to the complexities of the tax code, women encounter distinct challenges,” reads a post on the company’s official blog, “and here at Intuit, we’re committed to empowering prosperity for […]
State Rundown 4/17: Tax Cut Proposals and the Consequences of Bad Tax Cuts
April 17, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
Happy (belated) Tax Day!
The Case for More Progressive State and Local Tax Systems, in Charts
April 17, 2024 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Eli Byerly-Duke
In a new chart book, Fairness Matters, we further explore our Who Pays? data with new graphics that reinforce the findings in the main report and demonstrate how state-level tax decisions shape economic divides for better and worse.
These Three Local EITCs Are Boosting Family Incomes at Tax Time
April 10, 2024 • By Andrew Boardman
This tax season more than 800,000 households in New York City, Maryland's Montgomery County, and San Francisco are set to receive a boost through local refundable EITCs. These credits put dollars directly into the pockets of low-income households, equipping families with resources to better make ends meet and invest in their futures. In turn, they can help build stronger, fairer, and more resilient communities.
State Rundown 4/3: Some States Buck the Trend on Foolish Tax Policy
April 3, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
This week tax cuts were debated across the upper Midwest...
Five Things to Know About Tax Foundation’s Critique of Maryland’s Worldwide Combined Reporting Proposal
April 1, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Matthew Gardner
Maryland lawmakers are considering enacting worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), also known as complete reporting. This policy offers a more accurate, and less gameable, way to calculate the amount of profit subject to state corporate tax. Enacting WWCR in Maryland would represent a huge step toward eliminating state corporate tax avoidance as it neutralizes a wide […]
Biden Is Right: Corporate Tax Avoidance Has Big Problems That We Can Fix
April 1, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
Sensible reforms to the corporate tax system can help both crack down on corporate tax avoidance and ensure companies that are flourishing are paying their share for the public infrastructure that forms the building blocks of their success.
State Rundown 3/28: Tax Cut Madness, But Our Brackets Bet on Tax Fairness
March 28, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
While madness is typically reserved for basketball in March, several high-profile, regressive tax cuts are making their way through state legislatures this week...
Congress Should Enhance – Not Diminish – IRS Capability this Tax Season
March 28, 2024 • By Joe Hughes
While funding cuts to the IRS may have been necessary as a political matter to avoid harmful agency shutdowns, they are severely misguided as a policy matter. By all serious accounts, cuts to IRS funding increase the deficit due to uncollected taxes – mostly from big businesses and the very wealthy.
Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in society – and tax policy has a huge role to play in making that happen. Better tax policy can help prepare our young children with skills to become successful and thriving adults.
The Estate Tax Should Help to Level the Playing Field. Instead it’s Letting the Rich Get Richer.
March 26, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer
The federal estate tax should ensure that family dynasties who’ve amassed enormous fortunes pay their fair share in taxes. But because policymakers have repeatedly doubled and tripled the immense sums that can be passed on before the tax kicks in, the estate tax today affects almost no one.
Over the past week Utah continued its slow march toward a more inequitable tax code...
These forward-thinking states are demonstrating the wide variety of options for policymakers who want to raise more from the wealthiest people, rein in corporate tax avoidance, create fair tax codes and build strong communities.
Governors and legislative leaders in a dozen states have made calls to fully eliminate their taxes on personal or corporate income, after many states already deeply slashed them over the past few years. The public deserves to know the true impact of these plans, which would inevitably result in an outsized windfall to states’ richest taxpayers, more power in the hands of wealthy households and corporations, extreme cuts to basic public services, and more deeply inequitable state tax codes.
Many state legislative sessions are in the final stretch...
Ahead of the ‘Bring Chicago Home’ Vote, Remember That Local Mansion Taxes are Tried and Tested
March 14, 2024 • By Andrew Boardman, Kamolika Das
As Chicago and other localities look for ways to shore up resources for critical public investments, it's important to remember that over a dozen cities and counties have already benefited from policies like mansion taxes.
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