Category: Trump Tax Policies
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Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowAt a time when record numbers of Americans are facing unemployment, state and local governments are facing a perfect storm of growing public investment needs and vanishing tax revenues, and small business owners are struggling to avoid even more layoffs, lavishing tax breaks on the top 1 percent in this way shouldn’t be in anyone’s top 20 list of needed tax changes. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorMarch 17, 2020
Checks to All vs. Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut
A payroll tax cut would help those lucky enough to keep their job and would provide a bigger break to those with more earnings. Sending checks to every household would be a far more effective economic stimulus because it would immediately put money in the hands of everyone who would likely spend it right away, pumping it back into the economy. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorMarch 10, 2020
Trump’s Proposed Payroll Tax Cut Is Not the Right Answer
The Trump administration is floating a cut in the Social Security payroll tax as a measure to counteract a potential economic downturn related to the COVID-19 virus. It should go without saying that a public health crisis requires government interventions that have nothing to do with taxes. But even if policymakers want to find ways to stimulate the economy beyond solving the health crisis, the payroll tax cut is not likely to be very effective. -
Amy Hanauer
Executive DirectorMarch 10, 2020
Taxes in a Time of Coronavirus
Some problems can only be solved when public officials have the resources to act. Today’s public health crisis is that kind of problem. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s deep tax cuts leave our health infrastructure knee-capped, just when we need it most. -
Now that multiple data points reveal the current administration, which promised to look out for the common man, is, in fact, presiding over an upward redistribution of wealth, the public is being treated to pasta policymaking in which advisors are conducting informal public opinion polling by throwing tax-cut ideas against the wall to see if any stick. But the intent behind these ideas is as transparent as a glass noodle. -
Jenice R. Robinson
Communications DirectorFebruary 12, 2020
2021 Trump Budget Continues 40-Year Trickle-Down Economic Agenda
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may as well have been called the Promise for Austerity Later Act. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorThe Treasury Department, tasked with issuing regulations to implement the hastily drafted Trump-GOP tax law, is concocting new tax breaks that are not provided in the law. This is the short version of what we learned while watching Tuesday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax.” -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowPresident Trump and GOP lawmakers often cited corporations’ abuse of tax havens, e.g. shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes, as justification for dramatically lowering the federal corporate tax rate under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By 2016, corporations’ offshore cash haul had grown to $2.6 trillion, representing hundreds of billions in lost federal tax […] -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorDecember 19, 2019
Corporate Tax Avoidance Is Mostly Legal—and That’s the Problem
As usual, corporate spokespersons and their allies are trying to push back against ITEP’s latest study showing that many corporations pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. One way they respond is by stating that everything they do is perfectly legal. This is an attempt by the corporate world to change the subject. The entire point of ITEP’s study is that Congress has allowed corporations to avoid paying taxes, and that this must change. -
Jessica Schieder
Federal Tax Policy FellowRefundable federal tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), lifted 7.9 million people out of poverty in 2018. This latest analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates the power of federal programs to alleviate poverty and help low-income families keep up with the increasing cost of living. -
ITEP Staff
September 10, 2019
How Tax Policy Can Help Mitigate Poverty, Address Income Inequality
Analysts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have produced multiple recent briefs and reports that provide insight on how current and proposed tax policies affect family economic security and income inequality. -
Steve Wamhoff
Federal Policy DirectorPresident Trump’s allies in Congress continue to defend their 2017 tax law in misleading ways. Just last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee stated that most “of the tax overhaul went into the pockets of working families and Main Street businesses who need it most, not Wall Street.” ITEP’s most recent analysis estimates that in 2020 the richest 5 percent of taxpayers will receive $145 billion in tax cuts, or half the law's benefits to U.S. taxpayers. -
Jessica Schieder
Federal Tax Policy FellowAugust 12, 2019
The Mortgage Interest Deduction Is a House of Cards
Given how much more exclusively this deduction now benefits the highest-income households, its continued existence is hard to justify. Even when the credit was available to a larger swath of families, it was ineffective at promoting homeownership. -
Jenice R. Robinson
Communications DirectorPolicymakers and the public widely agree that economic inequality is the social policy problem of our age. It threatens the livelihoods of millions of children and adults, and it even threatens our democracy. Although some say Americans could fix it themselves by simply rolling up their sleeves, as a sub-headline in a March U.S. News and World Report column implied, the reality is different. -
ITEP Staff
April 23, 2019
So-Called Opportunity Zones Provide Opportunity for Whom?
In early April, a diverse but mostly black crowd took to the streets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. to protest T-Mobile’s decision to order Metro PCS to cease playing gogo music. This tale is a shining example of why economic investment—especially taxpayer-incentivized investment—in underserved communities is fraught with controversy. Who ultimately benefits after developers pour millions of dollars into these communities? And, as this controversy reveals, are the usually black and brown denizens of these neighborhoods and businesses that may have catered to them no longer welcome once economic development reaches a critical mass? -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowMeet the new corporate tax system, same as the old corporate tax system. That’s the inescapable conclusion of a new ITEP report assessing the taxpaying behavior of America’s most profitable corporations. The report, Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Law, released earlier this week, finds that 60 Fortune 500 corporations disclose paying zero in federal income taxes in 2018 despite enjoying large profits. -
Jessica Schieder
Federal Tax Policy FellowProponents sold the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as a way to spur new investment, increase workers’ paychecks, and reverse the off-shoring of jobs. Testimony presented during a House Ways and Means hearing held today reflected on how—more than a year after the law’s passage—each of those pitches ring hollow. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowMarch 25, 2019
Corporate Profits ?, Corporate Federal Tax Collections ?
Data released Friday by the U.S. Treasury Department should give great pause to all who care about the federal government’s ability to raise revenue in a fair, sustainable way. In the wake of the 2017 corporate tax overhaul, corporate tax collections have fallen at a rate never seen during a period of economic growth. -
Carl Davis
Research DirectorFebruary 13, 2019
Fact-Checking on Trump Tax Law Needs a Fact Check
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), enacted by President Trump and Congressional Republicans at the end of 2017, has caused quite a bit of confusion, and a recent “Fact Checker” column by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler does not help. TCJA created real problems that can't be resolved without real tax reform. To begin that process fact checkers, lawmakers, and everyone else need to be clear about what TCJA did, and did not, do to our tax system. -
Jenice R. Robinson
Communications DirectorIt was the tone-deaf remark heard ‘round the world. Last week on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that furloughed government employees who hadn’t been paid in a month could go to a bank and get a loan to make ends meet. This was not a gaffe. It’s hard to fathom how a […] -
Richard Phillips
Senior Policy AnalystWhile it has only been a year since passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), it’s clear the law largely is both a debacle and a boondoggle. Below are the five takeaways about the legacy and continuing effect of the TCJA. 1. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will substantially increase income, wealth, and racial inequality. 2. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will continue to substantially increase the deficit. 3. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not significantly boosting growth or jobs. 4. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act continues to be very unpopular. 5. Despite the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s lack of popularity and ill effects, many Republican lawmakers are calling for even more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. -
Matthew Gardner
Senior FellowAlmost a year after lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, evidence continues to mount that it is providing far more tax cuts than jobs. A new Morgan Stanley report estimates that U.S. companies repatriated between $50 billion and $100 billion of offshore cash in the third quarter of 2018. This means companies […] -
Jenice R. Robinson
Communications DirectorFebruary 20, 2018
Why We’re Not Eternally Grateful for $1,000 Crumbs
Two narratives that intentionally obscure who benefits from the tax law are emerging. One focuses on the personal income tax cuts that will result in an increase in net take-home pay for many employees once their employers adjust withholding. Anecdotes abound of working people getting a $100 or more increase, after taxes, per paycheck, but the reality is that most workers will receive a lot less than that. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1 percent of households will receive an average annual tax break of $55,000, an amount that nearly eclipses the nation’s median household income. -
Jenice R. Robinson
Communications DirectorThe hand-written scrawls in the margins of the hastily written 500-page Senate tax bill had barely dried when lawmakers began to reveal the true motivation behind their rush to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s tax code.
Blog Categories
- Corporate Taxes
- Earned Income Tax Credit
- Education Tax Breaks
- Federal Policy
- Fines and Fees
- Immigration
- Inequality and the Economy
- Local Income Taxes
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- 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 Credits for Workers and Families
- Tax Reform Options and Challenges
- Taxing Wealth and Income from Wealth
- Trump Tax Policies
- Who Pays?