Blog - Inequality and the Economy
50 posts
Excessive CEO Pay Makes Inequality Worse. Shareholders and the Public Deserve to Know About Compensation Disparities
July 30, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
Huge executive pay packages are a prime driver of income inequality. Shareholders and the public deserve to know about how CEOs are compensated, but new SEC leadership seems to think otherwise.
Trump Megabill Will Give $117 Billion in Tax Cuts to the Top 1% in 2026. How Much In Your State?
June 30, 2025 • By Michael Ettlinger
The predominant feature of the tax and spending bill working its way through Congress is a massive tax cut for the richest 1 percent — a $114 billion benefit to the wealthiest people in the country in 2026 alone.
How Much Do the Top 1% in Each State Get from the Trump Megabill?
June 30, 2025 • By Carl Davis
The Senate tax bill under debate right now would bring very large tax cuts to very high-income people. In total, the richest 1 percent would receive $114 billion in tax cuts next year alone. That would amount to nearly $61,000 for each of these affluent households.
Our tax policies enable people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump to accumulate more wealth than anyone could ever use in a lifetime. They then use it to steer elections and shape public policy to further enrich themselves and others like them. We should defeat the enormously destructive tax bill in Congress and instead craft tax policy that taxes the rich, makes our democracy more fair, and returns resources to the rest of the country.
The House of Representatives unveiled a sprawling piece of tax legislation earlier this week that would extend temporary tax changes enacted in 2017 and layer various kinds of tax cuts and increases on top. The JCT analysis makes clear that the House tax plan would be regressive, meaning it would offer larger tax cuts as a share of income to high-income taxpayers than to either middle-class or working-class families. It also makes clear that most of the tax cuts would go to families with above-average incomes.
The tariffs proposed by Donald Trump, which are far larger than any on the books today, would significantly raise the prices faced by American consumers across the income scale.
It’s Tax Day. You’ve Paid Your Share, but the Billionaires Haven’t.
April 15, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer
You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now.
Why Americans Are Right to Be Unhappy About Corporate Tax Avoidance
March 26, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
If lawmakers wanted to reduce income inequality and racial inequality, shutting down or at least limiting corporate tax breaks would be one option to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, President Trump and the current Congress show little interest in this and may even move in the opposite direction by introducing new corporate tax breaks.
Two Ways a 2025 Federal Tax Bill Could Worsen Income and Racial Inequality
March 26, 2025 • By Joe Hughes
Two parts of Trump’s 2017 tax law that are particularly expensive and beneficial to the richest individuals are the changes in income tax rates and brackets and the special deduction for “pass-through” business owners. Lawmakers should not extend these provisions for high-income households past the end of this year, when they are scheduled to expire.
Billionaires and businesses have too much power in Washington. Tax revenue is needed to pay for things we all need. If we want economic justice, racial justice and climate justice, we must have tax justice.
How Tax Decisions in 2025 Can Advance Racial Justice
October 30, 2024 • By Brakeyshia Samms, Jon Whiten
In the coming 14 months, federal lawmakers should address longstanding issues of racism in the tax code. With a presidential election this fall and many provisions of 2017’s Trump tax law expiring at the end of 2025, the debate over tax policy and economic fairness is in full swing.
President Biden discussed multiple tax proposals during the State of the Union address to Congress. Several of these proposals appeared in the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, but at least two appear to be new proposals. Raise Corporate Tax Rate from 21 Percent to 28 Percent 10-Year Revenue Impact in President’s Previous […]
The Moore Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court Could Widen the Racial Wealth Gap
October 17, 2023 • By Brakeyshia Samms, Moore v. United States
Moore v. United States, already a cause for concern for tax lawyers, could create more barriers for racial equity advocates working to reverse the economic plight of many households of color.
As one of the most prosperous countries in human history, we have enough resources for our collective needs. By better taxing corporations and the wealthiest, we can generate revenue to improve family security, strengthen our communities, and reduce the debt too.
“Fair Tax” Plan Would Abolish the IRS and Shift Federal Taxes from the Wealthy to the Rest of Us
January 11, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff
The "Fair Tax" bill would impose a 30 percent federal sales tax on everything we buy – groceries, cars, homes, health care - and lead to a giant tax shift from the well-off to everyone else.
Biden’s Proposals Would Fix a Tax Code that Coddles Billionaires
April 21, 2022 • By Steve Wamhoff
Billionaires can afford to pay a larger share of their income in taxes than teachers, nurses and firefighters. But our tax code often allows them to pay less, as demonstrated by the latest expose from reporters at ProPublica using IRS data. According to their calculations, Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary under former President Donald Trump, […]
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.
Federal Tax Reform Would be a Step in the Right Direction for Millennials of Color
October 18, 2021 • By Brakeyshia Samms
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.
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.
Limiting Tax Breaks for Capital Gains Would Mitigate the Racial Wealth Gap
October 14, 2021 • By Joe Hughes
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.
State Income Tax Reform Can Bring Us Closer to Racial Equity
October 4, 2021 • By Carl Davis, ITEP Staff, Marco Guzman
To pave the way for a more racially equitable future, states must move away from poorly designed, regressive policies that solidify the vast inequalities that exist today.
When Tax Breaks for Retirement Savings Enrich the Already Rich
June 25, 2021 • By Steve Wamhoff
Members of Congress frequently claim they want to make it easier for working people to scrape together enough savings to have some financial security in retirement. But lawmakers’ preferred method to (ostensibly) achieve this goal is through tax breaks that have allowed the tech mogul Peter Thiel to avoid taxes on $5 billion. This is just one of the eye-popping revelations in the latest expose from ProPublica.
Inclusive Child Tax Credit Reform Would Restore Benefit to 1 Million Young ‘Dreamers’
April 27, 2021 • By Marco Guzman
As the Biden administration maps out the next steps in America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic—through what is now being called the American Families Plan—it should make sure a proposed expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) includes undocumented children who have largely been left out of federal relief packages this past year. Prior to 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, all children regardless of their immigration status received the credit as long as their parents met the income eligibility requirements. This change essentially excluded around 1 million children and their families.
With the onslaught of news about billionaire wealth soaring while low- and moderate-income families have trouble making ends meet, a federal wealth tax makes good economic and fiscal sense—and the public supports it. One poll found that 64 percent of respondents favor the idea, including a majority of Republicans.
While the moneyed elite were dangling shiny objects, scapegoating Black and brown people, denigrating immigrants, and financing studies to convince us that poor people are the problem, they were concurrently securing policies that cut taxes primarily for the rich and profitable corporations, deregulated industry, weakened unions and attacked voting rights. This and more allowed the rich to amass even more wealth and power.
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