Category: Federal Policy

Carl Davis
Research Director

March 16, 2022

State Gas Tax Holidays are Nothing to Celebrate

It’s unlikely that state gas tax holidays will meaningfully benefit consumers, and they come with risks for states’ infrastructure quality.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

March 11, 2022

What We Can Learn Today from the American Rescue Plan – and Sen. Rick Scott’s Proposed Tax Increases

The success of the American Rescue Plan Act is worth revisiting today. Instead of pursuing Sen. Rick Scott’s agenda of making life more difficult for those already working the hardest, Congress should extend or make permanent some of the beneficial policies in ARPA.
Amy Hanauer
Executive Director

March 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.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

February 22, 2022

Senate Republicans Revive the Myth of the Takers

Sen. Scott and others who favor shifting taxes away from the rich and down the income distribution often focus solely on the federal personal income tax and ignore all the other taxes that Americans pay.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

February 17, 2022

The Federal Gas Tax Holiday is Not a New Idea, Just a Bad One

The argument for suspending the gas tax, which would cost $20 billion, is weaker than ever.
Amy Hanauer
Executive Director

February 16, 2022

Imagine a Better Tax Code, Use Evidence to Make It Real

It’s become popular to urge people to imagine a better world. But on tax policy, the last year gives us ample evidence that lets us move far beyond imagining.
Matthew Gardner
Senior Fellow

February 7, 2022

Amazon Avoids More Than $5 Billion in Corporate Income Taxes, Reports 6 Percent Tax Rate on $35 Billion of US Income

Amazon 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 Fellow

February 1, 2022

Netflix Posts a Record $5.3 Billion in Profits and a Federal Tax Rate of Just 1.1 Percent

Netflix'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.
Brakeyshia Samms
Senior Policy Analyst

January 31, 2022

Build Back Better’s Tax Provisions Would Help Advance Racial Equity

Build Back Better can help ensure that all people are provided with the chance to lead healthy lives, have access to quality education, are treated fairly and justly, and thrive in today’s economy.
Amy Hanauer
Executive Director

January 25, 2022

Why Tax Reform Should Remain on the Table

In this country, wealthier than any other and wealthier than we’ve ever been, we can create a smarter, more equitable tax code that better taxes those most able to pay.
January 14, 2022

The Compelling Data and Moral Case for Continuing the Child Tax Credit Expansion

In just six short months, the enhanced Child Tax Credit (CTC), enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), decreased the number of children living in poverty by 40 percent. ITEP estimated that the lowest-income 20 percent of households with children would receive a 35 percent income boost from this policy alone in 2021. This is a meaningful, life-changing sum.
Joe Hughes
Senior Policy Analyst

January 13, 2022

The Problem with Returning to a $2,000 Non-Refundable Child Tax Credit

Prior to last year, more than one in three children lived in households with incomes too low to receive the full $2,000 credit because it is not fully refundable. This means earnings requirements and other limits reduce the amount tax filers can receive as a refund. In fact, the maximum refundable portion is reduced to $1,400 (less than half of the maximum refundable credit available in 2021).
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

December 14, 2021

ITEP Data on Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit Provisions Before Congress

Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP). The additional benefits that millions of families and workers received under that law will end this month if Congress does not act soon. The CTC expansion boosted the annual tax credit […]
ITEP Staff

December 9, 2021

Tax Credits in Build Back Better Support Millions of Families

The EITC and CTC are proven poverty-fighting tools. The monthly CTC payments alone kept 3.6 million people out of poverty in October. This policy success is worth repeating.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

December 7, 2021

Latest Proposal from Senate Democrats Would Bar the Rich from SALT Cap Relief

Richest taxpayers would receive $0 benefit under new compromise compared with 51 percent of the benefit of House-passed SALT provision DOWNLOAD NATIONAL AND STATE-BY-STATE ESTIMATES In the latest chapter of the saga over SALT, some Senate Democrats are discussing a new compromise that would amend the House-passed provision providing relief from the SALT cap to […]
Joe Hughes
Senior Policy Analyst

November 18, 2021

Key Reform in Build Back Better Act Would Close Loophole Used by the Rich To Avoid Funding Healthcare

The proposal in the Democrats’ Build Back Better proposal applies the 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax to all profit distributions from partnerships and S-corporations so that this income of wealthy pass-through business owners no longer escapes.
Aidan Davis
State Policy Director

November 18, 2021

Tax Credit Reforms in Build Back Better Would Benefit a Diverse Group of Families

The CTC and EITC provisions would have a particularly profound effect on the poorest 20 percent of Americans, who all will have incomes of less than $22,000 in 2022. Taken together, the EITC and CTC changes would lift the average income of these households by more than 10 percent.
Matthew Gardner
Senior Fellow

November 18, 2021

Report Illustrates How 70 Corporations Could Be Affected by Minimum Tax Proposal in the Build Back Better Act

Amazon, 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 Policy Analyst

November 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 Director

November 3, 2021

Senators Menendez and Sanders Show the Way Forward on the SALT Cap

Amending the Build Back Better bill to fully repeal the SALT cap would mean that the richest 1 percent could pay less in personal income taxes than they do now, which goes against everything President Biden has said for the past year as he promoted this legislation.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

October 27, 2021

America’s Richest Would Finally Pay Taxes on Most of Their Income Under Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax

While the Ways and Means bill includes many helpful tax reforms, people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk would still pay an effective tax rate of zero percent on most of their income if it was enacted without this change. Sen. Wyden’s proposal would finally end this injustice.
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy Director

October 27, 2021

Senate Democrats’ Corporate Minimum Tax Could Address the Worst Corporate Tax Dodging

There 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.
Brakeyshia Samms
Senior Policy Analyst

October 18, 2021

Federal Tax Reform Would be a Step in the Right Direction for Millennials of Color

Currently, millennials of color are worse off than their parents when it comes to wealth expectations. So, if one of the goals of federal policymakers is to reduce racial income and wealth disparities, the proposals outlined are a good start. Tax reforms included in the budget package making its way through Congress would help by boosting incomes and making raising children more affordable—two things that would help millennials of color thrive in today’s economy.
Emma Sifre
Senior Data Analyst

October 18, 2021

The Role of Census Data in Policy and Racial Equity

The Census has changed the way it asks questions in the past and can choose to do so again in the future. As the Biden administration makes data a central part of its plan to achieve greater racial equity, it has an opportunity to implement research-backed changes that will improve our understanding of race and ethnicity in the United States, and in turn, our ability to draw meaningful conclusions about how our tax laws impact tax filers of different races.
Joe Hughes
Senior Policy Analyst

October 14, 2021

Limiting Tax Breaks for Capital Gains Would Mitigate the Racial Wealth Gap

The racial wealth and income gaps are the results of centuries of government policies favoring the accumulation of wealth among white communities while marginalizing communities of color. Policy solutions that are race-forward, meaning they remedy past and ongoing racial inequities, can also address broader social inequities.