Blog - State Policy
657 posts
Reality Interrupts the Fever Dream of Income Tax Elimination in Kentucky
June 27, 2024 • By Eli Byerly-Duke
Keeping the Kentucky income tax on a march to zero would mean tax hikes for working families or widespread cuts to education, health care, and other public services. Reversing course is certainly the wiser course of action.
State Rundown 6/26: Summer Special Sessions Are In, Anti-tax Ballot Initiatives Out
June 26, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
Many families are heading out on summer vacations, but legislators across the country are heading back to statehouses for special sessions...
Property Tax Circuit Breakers Can Help States Create More Equitable Tax Codes
June 24, 2024 • By Brakeyshia Samms
Well-designed property tax circuit breaker programs allow states to reduce the impact that property taxes have on the upside-down tilt of their tax codes.
Juneteenth is a reminder of the hard-fought victories that helped Black Americans secure their delayed freedom, justice, and suffrage. And in the chapters about tax policy, the tales are no less fraught. From America’s prologue to the last paragraph of the Civil War, governments raised more tax revenue from the taxation of Black bodies than […]
State Rundown 6/13: Decisions are falling into place, but some states will come back for more
June 13, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
State budgets are falling into place as lawmakers near the end of their legislative sessions...
This week, it was the best of times or, in some cases, the worst of times for tax policy in two different states...
Legislative sessions across the country are still very much in for summer, which means more pencils, more budgets, and more tax plans...
States Should Opt Into IRS Direct File as the Program is Made Permanent
May 30, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
While there is plenty of room to expand Direct File at the federal level, states can take matters into their own hands and bring this benefit to their residents by opting into the program.
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...
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.
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.
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 […]
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...
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.
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.
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