-
Joe Hughes
Senior AnalystCongressional leaders announced their long-awaited omnibus spending package which will fund the government through September 2023. The good news: the bill does not include needless corporate tax giveaways. The bad news: it also leaves out any expansion of the child tax credit. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorDecember 14, 2022
Guide to a Potential Year-End Tax Bill in Congress
Any tax legislation enacted before this Congress ends should prioritize policies that have a proven track record of helping workers and children rather than policies that cut taxes for corporations or for individuals who are already well-off. It's not clear right now whether lawmakers will do that - or whether they will enact any tax legislation at all before the year ends, but here we take a look at the key tax issues that lawmakers are discussing. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorIf Congress creates a tax break to encourage businesses to conduct research that benefits society, should Netflix be eligible for it? There is no shame in binge-watching Stranger Things or Bridgerton or The Crown, but how many of us really think Netflix deserves a tax break for whatever “research” the company did to provide this […] -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorPrivate equity is doing fine on its own and does not need another tax break. Congress should keep the stricter limit on deductions for interest payments —one of the few provisions in the 2017 tax law that asked large businesses to pay a little bit more. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe Inflation Reduction Act approved by the Senate on Aug. 7 would raise more than $700 billion in new revenue over a decade by closing corporate tax loopholes, empowering the IRS to enforce the tax laws on the books, taxing stock buybacks, and extending a limitation on deductions for business losses. The IRA – if […] -
Joe Hughes
Senior AnalystSenate Democrats have announced an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act that, among other changes to a previous version of the bill, would apply a 1 percent tax on corporations repurchasing their own stock. This proposal was included in the House-passed Build Back Better Act last year and was estimated at that time to raise $124 billion over 10 years. This measure would ensure that income transferred from corporations to wealthy shareholders does not continue to escape taxation. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowApple, one of the largest corporations in the United States despite manufacturing most of its physical products offshore, would likely pay the corporate minimum tax that is included in the Inflation Reduction Act that the Senate is debating this week. 3M, a manufacturer that has about 40 percent of its workforce in the United States, likely would not pay the corporate minimum tax if current trends in the company’s profits and taxes continue, because it is already paying above 15 percent of its profits in taxes. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe biggest revenue-raising provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, the 15 percent minimum tax for corporations that have more than a billion dollars in profits, is under attack from members of Congress who argue that manufacturing companies should not be required to pay any minimum amount of tax. Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on […] -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe vast majority of Senate Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in approving a new corporate tax break related to research in legislation that contains no offsetting corporate tax increases. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorNew corporate tax proposals address the current situation, but ultimately leaders in Washington must fix federal law to tax all corporate profits and stop the tax dodging that is rampant today. -
Amy Hanauer
Executive DirectorMarch 1, 2022
Taxes Should be Part of the State of the Union Agenda
President Biden should elevate his tax and revenue proposals which remain essential if we are to pay for environmental restoration, health priorities and peacekeeping, the front-burner items that may dominate the speech. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowAmazon avoided about $5.2 billion of federal income tax on its record $36 billion in U.S. pretax income for fiscal year 2021. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowNetflix's 2021 financial report shows it doubled its profits to $5.3 billion from the previous year and reported an effective federal corporate income tax rate of 1.1 percent. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowAmazon, Bank of America, Facebook, FedEx, General Motors, Google, Netflix, PayPal, T-Mobile and Verizon are just a few of the 70 corporations that would have paid more taxes under the Democrats’ proposed Corporate Profits Minimum Tax (CPMT) if it had been in effect in 2020 according to a new report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office with estimates verified by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. -
Joe Hughes
Senior AnalystNovember 4, 2021
Democrats Seek to Eliminate the Stock Buyback Advantage
An important reform in the bill before Congress would tax stock buybacks in a way that is more comparable to how dividends are taxed. Corporations would be required to pay a tax equal to 1 percent of their stock repurchases, ensuring that profits shifted to shareholders in this way are subject to some federal tax. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThere is no reason corporations reporting hundreds of millions, but not billions, of dollars in profits to their shareholders should be allowed to avoid paying taxes. Nonetheless, the corporate minimum tax is a huge step forward and a valuable component of the Build Back Better plan. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorSpecial interests lobbying against President Joe Biden’s tax agenda claim that his proposed corporate income tax rate hike will harm small businesses and that his proposed capital gains tax reforms will hurt family farms. Both claims are absurd attempts by powerful interests to pretend they are defending the little guy. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorIRS budget cuts starting in 2010 have forced the agency to reduce its audit rate for corporations with $20 billion or more in assets from 98 percent to 50 percent. The Washington Post found that during the decade, the amount of “uncertain tax benefits” claimed by corporations increased 43 percent, from $164 billion in 2010 to $235 billion in 2020. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe agreement announced over the weekend from the finance leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) countries to allow governments to tax some corporate profits based on the location of sales and to implement a 15 percent global minimum tax is a major step forward—but in no way changes the need for Congress to enact President Joe Biden’s tax reforms right now. -
Each year, corporations publicly state that some of the tax breaks they claim are unlikely to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities. And each year, corporations report that they will keep some of the dubious tax breaks they declared in previous years simply because the statute of limitations ran out before tax authorities made any conclusions. This suggests that, perhaps because of cuts to its enforcement budget, the IRS is not even investigating corporations that publicly announce they have claimed tax breaks that tax authorities would likely find illegal.
-
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowIt was (allegedly) P.T. Barnum who first said “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But the public relations professionals at the Nike Corporation clearly disagree with this maxim. Last week, after multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, wrote about ITEP’s conclusion that Nike avoided federal corporate income taxes under the Trump tax law, the company contacted these news organizations to… change the subject. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorApril 1, 2021
Biden’s Corporate Tax Revolution
The corporate tax plan put forth on Wednesday by President Joe Biden to offset the cost of his infrastructure priorities would be the most significant corporate tax reform in a generation if enacted. -
Amy Hanauer
Executive DirectorMarch 25, 2021
Here Are Some Truths About Corporate Tax Avoidance
We all need the things that the public sector provides. When corporate taxes go unpaid, the American people have less for the things that would help our communities. That means less repair of our failing infrastructure, less investment in greening our economy, less funding to help young people attend college. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowMarch 19, 2021
Zoom Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes on Pandemic Profits
Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe 2017 tax law simply replaced one set of loophole-ridden rules that favored offshore profits over domestic profits with a new set of loophole-ridden rules doing the same thing. A bill introduced today by Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse would finally fix this to follow a simple principle: we should tax the offshore profits and domestic profits of our corporations the same way.
Blog Categories
- Corporate Taxes
- Earned Income Tax Credit
- Education Tax Breaks
- Federal Policy
- Fines and Fees
- Immigration
- Inequality and the Economy
- Local Income Taxes
- Local Policy
- Local Property Taxes
- Local Refundable Tax Credits
- Local Sales Taxes
- Maps
- Personal Income Taxes
- Property Taxes
- Refundable Tax Credits
- Sales, Gas and Excise Taxes
- SALT Deduction
- State Corporate Taxes
- State Policy
- Tax Analyses
- Tax Basics
- Tax Credits for Workers and Families
- Tax Reform Options and Challenges
- Taxing Wealth and Income from Wealth
- Trump Tax Policies
- Who Pays?