Citations

Lack of access to affordable, high-quality child care is a barrier to labor force participation for working parents in North Carolina and affects our state’s economy. Read more.

The New Year will bring little certainty to everyday North Carolinians.  State legislators have failed to use the policy tools available to them to address rising costs for the basics, from food to child-care to housing. Read more.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, this NC Senate proposal alone would deliver an additional average annual tax cut of $64,700 to millionaires in North Carolina, on top of their federal tax cuts and more than a decade of state cuts. This is more than 52 times the average amount received by non-millionaires, who would see roughly $1,200.

In 2022, people who are undocumented paid $692 million in North Carolina state and local taxes.[ii] If ten percent of people who are undocumented are deported it would result in a loss of $69 million per year in state and local tax revenues.

They will risk recurring budget deficits. They will risk an inability to protect North Carolinians from federal Medicaid and food assistance cuts. To deliver these tax cuts, they will cut funding for the state’s public K-12 students and community college students.

Despite strong state performance in job growth and employment, too many households in North Carolina are struggling to make ends meet and cope with the rising cost of living — especially those with young children. Widespread low incomes and elevated poverty rates are preventing families from meeting their needs, reaching their potential, and contributing their full talents to our communities. The prevalence of this financial hardship has direct consequences for the long-term well-being of children and our state’s economy.

The announcement that the NC Supreme Court will rehear the court case that affirmed children’s constitutional right to a sound, basic education is just another way in which North Carolina’s legislative leaders are attempting to rewrite the rules to further their agenda rather than the well-being of children. Read more.

The NC Senate tax plan will double down on the path to zero income tax — keeping in place the elimination of the corporate income tax and reducing the personal income tax to 2.49 percent after 2029 — to benefit the very wealthy and profitable corporations. Read more.

Inflation isn’t just a pocketbook problem, it’s a budget problem as well. Governments feel the pinch of gas prices climbing higher, food becoming more expensive, and increased competition from private sector employers as well as most of the impacts of inflation that affect consumers and businesses. Unfortunately, the 2022-23 budget allows inflation to undermine the […]

The House tax plan would deliver the greatest share of the net tax cut to the richest North Carolinians. Fifty-six percent of the net tax cut would go to the richest 20 percent in North Carolina. During the House Finance debate, proponents of the tax plan suggested that North Carolinians with poverty-level incomes would see […]

When one applies a unique tool developed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy to assess the racial and ethnic impact of the budget proposal approved by the state Senate in June (SB 105), it becomes clear that the proposed income tax reductions will worsen the state’s exclusionary tax code. This analysis should serve […]

The Senate’s budget plan would bring the state’s investments to a new low while committing the state to untold losses in the form of revenue reductions by eliminating income taxes for profitable corporations by 2028 and lowering the already flat (read: regressive) personal income tax rate. Read more

North Carolina’s current tax code asks the top to pay less as a share of their income than taxpayers with poverty-level incomes. By putting in place tax policies that would ask just 1 percent of North Carolinians to pay slightly more, North Carolina can invest in a more equitable, just recovery for everyone. Read more

Discovery No. 1 one is that almost no major U.S. corporation, certainly not those that do business overseas, actually pays the 21% corporate tax rate, set by law. In fact, on average, Fortune 500 companies pay about half that much – 11.3% according to the non-profit Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy and Taxation, working […]

North Carolina’s tax code and budget are wrought with such policy choices, which can result in racist outcome that worsen barriers to well-being for people and communities of color, according to new data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The greater tax load carried by Black, Indigenous, and Latinx residents has been […]

North Carolina’s tax code and budget are wrought with such policy choices, which can result in racist outcomes that worsen barriers to well-being for people and communities of color, according to new data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The greater tax load carried by Black, Indigenous, and Latinx residents has been […]

Southern states have a particularly egregious record on tax equity, rooted partly in racism. Lawmakers baked some of the most egregious and anti-democratic tax policies into southern state constitutions, such as supermajority requirements to raise taxes in Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, income tax rate caps in North Carolina and Georgia, and the recent elimination of […]

In addition to state and local taxes, new estimates show that the labor of undocumented workers in Washington state has resulted in nearly $400 million of contributions to the state and federal unemployment trust fund over the past ten years. Yet these workers are systematically denied protection when they become unemployed. Read more

In a replay of how aid checks were dispensed during the Great Recession, the CARES Act reveals giant holes in how we get cash to people in desperate need. Without federal, state, and local policy action, many of the North Carolinians who need aid most urgently will be the last to get it or won’t […]

Analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that 27 percent of the total net tax cut from the increase in the standard deduction will actually go to the top 20 percent, while just 7 percent will go to the bottom 20 percent whose income leaves them in poverty each year. Read more