Blog
1,405 posts
State Rundown 3/4: Budget Realities Set In
• By ITEP Staff
As many state legislative sessions near or cross the halfway point, lawmakers are facing tough choices.
New Income Tax Disclosure Rules Mean Halliburton Can No Longer Conceal Its Offshore Tax Avoidance
• By Matthew Gardner
The company’s latest annual report throws the doors wide open once again on Halliburton’s penchant for offshoring its profits to tax havens, thanks to terrific new disclosure rules introduced by an obscure but vital agency, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
Cheniere Energy Gets $380 Million Gift from Trump’s Treasury Department
• By Matthew Gardner
Cheniere Energy's latest annual financial report shows the company reaped a cool $380 million in tax cuts from a single regulatory change made by the Trump administration last fall.
Nvidia’s Tax Bill Shows It’s Not Just Zero-Tax Corporations That Hurt Our Budget Deficit the Most
• By Matthew Gardner
Semiconductor giant Nvidia reported avoiding $6.8 billion in federal income taxes last year. The company did this in a year when it reported greater earnings growth than almost any corporation in history, with U.S. pretax income coming in at an astonishing $123 billion.
State Rundown 2/25: Sausage-Making Season Is Upon Us
• By ITEP Staff
National Sausage Month isn’t until October, but now is the time of year when state lawmakers are really diving into their sausage-making processes, as separate legislative houses and oftentimes political parties send competing bills, budgets, and visions back and forth to grind out their differences.
Pioneer Institute Criticizes ITEP For Not Writing the Paper They Would Have Written
• By Eli Byerly-Duke
Voters, lawmakers, researchers, and advocates frequently disagree about ideal tax policy. But the facts here speak for themselves.
Yum! Brands’ Recipe for Tax Avoidance: Trump Tax Cuts with a Dash of Malta
• By Matthew Gardner
the fast-food multinational that owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut reported this week that it made $1 billion of pretax profits in the U.S. last year—and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on those profits.
Despite a Supreme Court Victory for Middle-Class Americans, Trump’s Disastrous Tariff Policies Are Not Over
• By Steve Wamhoff
Today the Supreme Court made the right decision in striking down most of the tariffs President Trump has put into motion during his second term.
Live Nation Entertainment Says Trump Tax Law Drove its 2025 Federal Income Tax Bill to Zero
• By Matthew Gardner
The company paid zero federal income tax in 2025 despite reporting $145 million of U.S. profits.
Trump Administration Provides Biggest Illegal Tax Cuts Yet for Billion-Dollar Corporations
• By Amy Hanauer
The Treasury Department is unilaterally cutting corporate taxes with regulations that ignore the statute they claim to implement, disregarding the separation of powers between the branches of government that has defined how America works for more than two centuries.
Property Tax Reforms Can Bring Racial Justice
• By Brakeyshia Samms
Homes in Black neighborhoods are more likely to be over-assessed for tax purposes while being undervalued by private appraisers.
State Rundown 2/19: Necktie (NCTI) Offers a Way Out of a Knotty Situation
• By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers are grappling with a range of challenges as their fiscal outlooks deteriorate, federal tax enforcement wanes (after the Trump administration cut the IRS workforce by 25 percent), and a rewritten federal tax code sends states scrambling to decide what changes they might want to make in their own codes.
Palantir Pays Zero Federal Income Tax Despite Explosive Growth, Largely Due to Trump Tax Law
• By Matthew Gardner
Palantir reported $1.5 billion of U.S. income but paid exactly zero federal income tax in 2025. Despite explosive growth, tax breaks from the Trump tax law helped Palantir avoid paying even a dime of federal income tax on its earnings.
NCTI is an Important Part of the Federal Corporate Tax. States Should Adopt It Too.
• By Carl Davis
Including NCTI in state corporate tax law is an effective way to neutralize much of the tax avoidance that occurs when multinational companies artificially shift their profits into overseas tax havens.
State Rundown 2/11: This Valentine’s Day, Conscious Decoupling Is Our Love Language
• By ITEP Staff
While some may be excited for a romantic Valentine’s Day this weekend, many state lawmakers are breaking up and decoupling from recent federal tax changes that are poised to leave states with revenue shortfalls – much like a bad date who forgets their wallet and asks you to pick up the tab.
Trump Undermined the Constitution to Give Corporations a $10 Billion Tax Cut
• By Matthew Gardner
This unilateral corporate tax cut from the Trump administration will cost $10 billion over a decade unless it is reversed.
What Did 2025 State Tax Changes Mean for Racial and Economic Equity?
• By Brakeyshia Samms
The results are a mixed bag, with some states enacting promising policies that will improve tax equity and others going in the opposite direction.
D.C.’s Fiscal Autonomy is at Stake, District’s Conformity Decisions Should Stand
• By Kamolika Das
Federal lawmakers passed a bill along party lines that would force the District of Columbia to override the decision of local elected officials and implement all of the costly and inequitable federal tax cuts passed under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA).
Four Big Tech Companies Avoid $51 Billion in Taxes in Wake of One Big Beautiful Bill Act
• By Matthew Gardner
Four of the corporations whose CEOs flanked President Trump at his 2025 inauguration ceremony have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
State Rundown 2/5: Icy Roads Do Not Slow Tax Policy Debates
• By ITEP Staff
Despite wintry conditions across much of the country, that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from debating major tax policy changes.
Meta’s Federal Tax Rate Hits an All-Time Low Due to Breaks Expanded by Trump Tax Law
• By Matthew Gardner
The company paid an effective federal income tax rate of just over 3.5% in 2025, the lowest it has recorded since the company went public as Facebook in 2012.
Trust Reform is Needed to Protect States, Especially in the Wake of IRS Enforcement Cuts
• By Sarah Austin
Trust use is widespread among the wealthiest households, with reports showing that roughly half of the nation’s wealthiest people rely on trusts for tax avoidance reasons
An Anti-Affordability Agenda: Trump’s Advisors Call on States to Raise Taxes on the Working Class and Drastically Cut Taxes for the Rich
• By Carl Davis
The Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisors suggests that states consider drastically raising sales taxes and using those new revenues to pay for repealing taxes on corporate and personal income. Working-class families would face dramatic tax increases while the nation’s wealthiest families would see their state tax bills plummet.
Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $5.7 Billion of U.S. Income in 2025
• By Matthew Gardner
Tesla enjoyed almost $5.7 billion of U.S. income in 2025 but paid $0 in federal income tax. Over the past three years, the Elon Musk-led company reported $12.5 billion of U.S. income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million.
State Rundown 1/28: State Tax Cutting Plans Face Scrutiny
• By ITEP Staff
As state legislative sessions ramp up across the country, property taxes are one of many issues dominating tax policy conversations in statehouses.
Blog Categories
Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
Subscribe to ITEP Emails
Tax research and policy news in your inbox.
Promote Fair Tax Policy
Your gift to ITEP promotes tax justice. With your help, we do research that supports taxing millionaires and billionaires, taxing big corporations and raising revenue for the things our people, our communities and our planet need.
Together, we can create a country with more economic justice, more racial justice, more climate justice… and more tax justice.