Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

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30 posts
Five Things to Know About the Trump Administration’s New Effort to Deny Tax Credits to Lawfully Present Immigrants

Today the Trump administration proposed new regulations seeking to drastically reduce the tax credits that certain immigrant tax filers can claim. The affected credits include the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Additional Child Tax Credit, American Opportunity Tax Credit, and the Adoption Tax Credit. 

Top 1% to Receive $1 Trillion Tax Cut from Trump Megabill Over the Next Decade

The Trump megabill will give the top 1 percent tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade. For comparison, the bill’s cuts to the Medicaid health care program will total $930 billion over the same period.

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The House Tax Plan, By the Numbers

May 16, 2025 • By Carl Davis

The House Tax Plan, By the Numbers

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.

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The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs

April 23, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs

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.

Different Approaches to the Trump Tax Law’s Cap on Deductions for State and Local Taxes (SALT)

President Trump and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate may not extend the $10,000 cap on federal income tax deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), the one part of the 2017 law that significantly limits tax breaks for the rich. And, depending on which proposal they settle on, leaving out the existing cap on SALT deductions could add between $10 billion and over $100 billion each year to the total cost of their tax plan.

How Would the Harris and Trump Tax Plans Affect Different Income Groups?

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have put forward a wide range of different tax proposals during this year’s campaign. We have now fully analyzed the distributional impacts of the major proposals of both Vice President Harris and former President Trump in separate analyses. In all, the tax proposals announced by Harris would, on average, lead to a tax cut for all income groups except the richest 1 percent of Americans, while the proposals announced by Trump would, on average, lead to a tax increase for all income groups except the richest 5 percent of Americans.  

Voucher Boondoggle: House Advances Plan to Give the Wealthy $1.20 for Every $1 They Steer to Private K-12 Schools

The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee has advanced a new school voucher bill. H.R. 9462—the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2024—would create an unprecedented tax incentive designed to fund private, mostly religious, K-12 schools.

What Tax Provisions are in the Senate-Passed Inflation Reduction Act?

The 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 […]

New ITEP Report Examines the Tax Changes in the House Ways and Means Build Back Better Bill

The vast majority of these tax increases would be paid by the richest 1 percent of Americans and foreign investors. The bill’s most significant tax cuts -- expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) -- would more than offset the tax increases for the average taxpayer in all income groups except for the richest 5 percent.

House Ways and Means Provisions to Raise Revenue Would Significantly Improve Our Tax System But Fall Short of the President’s Plan

High-income people and corporations would pay more than they do today, which is a monumental change. But some wealthy billionaires like Jeff Bezos would continue to pay an effective rate of zero percent on most of their income, and American corporations would still have some incentives to shift profits offshore.

Child Tax Credit Is a Critical Component of Biden Administration’s Recovery Package

Nearly one in seven children in the United States live in poverty and about 6 percent of all children live in deep poverty. President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan would tackle child poverty in an immediate, meaningful way. It is expected to extend the one-year Child Tax Credit (CTC) enhancements included in the March 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) through 2025. Next year alone, this would provide around a $110 billion collective income boost to roughly 88 percent of children in the United States.

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SALT Cap Repeal Would Worsen Racial Income and Wealth Divides

April 20, 2021 • By Carl Davis, ITEP Staff, Jessica Schieder

SALT Cap Repeal Would Worsen Racial Income and Wealth Divides

A bipartisan group of 32 House lawmakers banded together to form the “SALT Caucus,” demanding elimination of the SALT cap. None of their arguments in favor of repeal change the fact that it would primarily benefit the rich and, according to new research, exacerbate racial income and wealth disparities.

Details of House Democrats’ Cash Payments and Tax Credit Expansions

The House Ways and Means Committee published its proposal for the cash payments, tax provisions and other changes that would make up part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief legislation that President Joe Biden called for a few weeks ago.

How the Proposed $2,000 Cash Payments Compare to the $600 Already Provided by Congress  

On Dec. 28, the House of Representatives passed the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (CASH) Act of 2020, which would increase the cash payment recently provided by Congress from $600 per person to $2,000 per person, among other changes. New estimates from ITEP compare the impacts of $2,000 payments to $600 payments.

National and State-by-State Estimates of New $600 Cash Payments

The House and Senate are about to pass the first COVID-19 relief legislation since the CARES Act was enacted in March. The new relief package includes, among other provisions, cash payments of $600 per person, which is half as large as the payments provided under the CARES Act, but also extends payments to spouses and children of certain undocumented immigrants who were left out of the previous payments.

SALT Cap Repeal Has No Place in COVID-19 Legislation: National and State-by-State Data

The Trump-GOP tax law enacted at the end of 2017 includes a $10,000 cap on the amount of state and local taxes (SALT) that people can deduct on their federal tax returns, and this is one of the few limits the law places on tax breaks for high-income people. Unfortunately, it is also the provision that some Democrats are most determined to remove.

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NEW ANALYSIS: House Democratic Stimulus Bill Explained

March 24, 2020 • By ITEP Staff, Meg Wiehe, Steve Wamhoff

NEW ANALYSIS: House Democratic Stimulus Bill Explained

Breaking ITEP analysis explains how a newly-introduced House Democrats' proposal—far more comprehensive and better targeted than the recently failed GOP Senate bill—combines overdue expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit with direct rebates to reach workers and families across all income groups.

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New State-by-State Estimates: Modified Senate GOP Stimulus Bill Still Falls Short

March 23, 2020 • By ITEP Staff, Meg Wiehe, Steve Wamhoff

New State-by-State Estimates: Modified Senate GOP Stimulus Bill Still Falls Short

The GOP Senate stimulus bill voted down yesterday is a slight improvement over the first GOP proposal released Thursday, but it still fails to prioritize workers and families or provide fast relief to those who need it most.

Why the GOP Senate Bill Fails to Address the Crisis, and Why a Democratic Bill Looks More Promising

National and state-by-state data available for download By Steve Wamhoff and Meg Wiehe On Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a bill that reportedly cost more than $1 trillion, most of which would go toward breaks for corporations and other businesses. A provision in the bill to provide payments to families would cost […]

Unlike Trump-GOP Tax Law, There Are Tax Plans That Would Actually Deliver on Promise to Help Working People

Using the tax code to boost the economic security of low- and moderate-income families is a proven strategy. These bold proposals would go much further than any policy currently on the books, and their approach directly contrasts with longstanding supply-side theories that call for continual tax cuts to those who are already economically faring far better than everyone else.

Proposals for Refundable Tax Credits Are Light Years from Tax Policies Enacted in Recent Years

A new ITEP report examines five big proposals that have been announced this year to create or expand tax credits to address inequality and help low- and middle-income households.

Shaking up TCJA: How a Proposed New Credit Could Shift Federal Tax Cuts from the Wealthy and Corporations to Working People

A new federal proposal, the Livable Incomes for Families Today (LIFT) the Middle Class Act, would create a new refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income working families who were little more than an afterthought in last year’s federal tax overhaul. This proposal would take the place of TCJA, providing tax cuts similar in cost to the recent federal tax law but targeted toward working people rather than the wealthy. ITEP analyzed the bill, proposed by California Senator Kamala Harris, and compared its potential impact to TCJA.

Twelve States Offer Profitable Tax Shelter to Private School Voucher Donors; IRS Proposal Could Fix This

A proposed IRS regulation would eliminate a tax shelter for private school donors in twelve states by making a commonsense improvement to the federal tax deduction for charitable gifts. For years, some affluent taxpayers who donate to private K-12 school voucher programs have managed to turn a profit by claiming state tax credits and federal tax deductions that, taken together, are worth more than the amount donated. This practice could soon come to an end under the IRS’s broader goal of ending misuse of the charitable deduction by people seeking to dodge the federal SALT deduction cap.

We Crunched Some Numbers to Show What Tax Reform for Working People Really Looks Like

Throughout President’s Trump’s presidential campaign and from his first day in office until now, his administration has favored and promoted policies that benefit the wealthy and corporations even as it claims to be the working people’s champion. If more recent economic data are a reflection of what we’ll see in the long-term due to the Trump Administration’s recent tax cuts, wealth will continue to accrue at the top while income remains stagnant or barely budges for low- and moderate-income families. Policy can make a difference: ITEP Staff shows how the Grow American Incomes Now (GAIN) Act would help millions of…

Repealing the Federal Tax Law’s Cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) Deductions Is No Improvement

National and State-by-State Data Available for Download Nearly Two-Thirds of Benefits from Repealing the SALT Cap Would Go to the Richest 1 Percent Lawmakers who opposed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the federal tax law enacted by President Trump and his allies in Congress last December, rightfully pointed out that the law benefits […]