Citations
ITEP's Citations Research Priorities
Indiana Institute for Working Families: New Analysis: Indiana’s Tax System is Among the Dozen Most Regressive in the Country
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
The new ‘Who Pays?’ analysis follows the Institute’s August report ‘The Status of Working Families in Indiana, 2018’ which found the wealthiest Indiana earners have received an extra $2,446 from combined state income, corporate, and fuel tax changes since 2012, while taxes for the bottom 60% of middle class and working families have increased by an average $36.
Kansas Center for Economic Growth: New Analysis: Tax Reform Reduces Inequality for Kansans, but Low-Income Taxpayers Still Pay 1.5 Times the Rate Paid by the Richest
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
A new study released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Kansas Center for Economic Growth finds that the lowest-income Kansans pay 1.5 times more in taxes as a percent of their income compared with the state’s wealthiest residents.
Insider NJ: New Analysis: Middle Class Taxpayers in New Jersey Still Paying More Than Tax Rate Paid by Richest 1 Percent of New Jerseyans
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
A new study released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) finds that New Jersey’s middle class families pay more in taxes as a percent of their income compared to the state’s wealthiest residents.
Politico Morning Tax: Desperately Seeking Clarity
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
MOST STATE TAX SYSTEMS REGRESSIVE: No state has more regressive taxes on its citizens than Washington, followed by Texas, Florida, South Dakota and Nevada, according to a distributional analysis of state tax systems that will be released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Most states take a larger share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families, it said. The 10 most regressive in the rankings tax their residents in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale at rates up to six times higher than the wealthy, while their middle-income families pay a rate up to…
Public News Service: Report: NM Tax Overhaul Would Benefit Kids, Families
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Regressive tax systems hurt children and families, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy - and by that standard, it says New Mexico has the 19th-worst tax system in the United States. The study showed that as a share of their income, the lowest-income New Mexicans are paying state and local tax rates almost double those of the state's wealthiest residents.
The American Prospect: Think the GOP Tax Cut Was for the Rich? Actually, It Was for the White and Rich.
October 16, 2018
The $1.5 trillion tax cut signed into law last December by President Trump is not only widening the economic gap between the rich and everyone else, but also between white Americans and people of color. That’s according to a new, first-of-its-kind analysis of the 2017 Republican Tax Act by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and Prosperity Now, a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income households. Using an economic model created by ITEP, the report drills down on the racial implications of the Republicans’ handiwork. The report’s authors found that racial inequities are a feature of the tax law, not a…
Truthout: North Carolina Ballot Initiative Would Enshrine Tax Cuts for the Rich
October 16, 2018
“Since 2012, when Republicans took full control of the legislature and governorship for the first time in modern history, they’ve been on a tax cutting rampage,” said Meg Wiehe, a North Carolina native and deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The state will be about $3.6 billion shorter in revenue than it would have been otherwise, which is a pretty significant difference in a state with a general fund of just around $21 billion.”
Pod Save the People: Flint: Lead & Beyond
October 16, 2018
DeRay, Brittany, Sam and Clint discuss the overlooked news, including the decline of U.S. prison populations, how American abortion policies affect women around the world, the death penalty, and who benefits from President Trump's tax cuts. (Podcast)
Law360: State Tax Codes Can Help Mitigate Poverty
October 15, 2018
State lawmakers have a tremendous opportunity to combat poverty with smart tax policies that can improve the lives of millions. Specifically, refundable tax credits for low-income workers and their families can play a role in positioning the nation’s most vulnerable families for success. Tax credits are also a vital tool for mitigating the upside-down nature of most state and local tax systems, which take a greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families. They are also especially important at a time when many federal lawmakers are determined to dismantle the safety net creating even more…
Mother Jones: A New Study Shows White Families Getting Four-Fifths of Trump’s Tax Cut
October 13, 2018
“Households of color have less income and have less wealth than white households, in large part due to centuries of systemic racism,” says Meg Wiehe, ITEP’s deputy director and one of the report’s authors. “So inevitably a tax cut that’s so expensive and so tilted to the top is furthering not just income inequality—it’s also furthering racial inequity in income and in wealth.”
Orlando Sentinel: Commentary: Vote No On Amendment 5: Allows a Few to Thwart the Needs of Many
October 12, 2018
This amendment would lock in tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthy and large corporations, making our tax system even more unfair than it is now. The nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports that only one state ranks lower in terms of the fairness of its tax system. Floridians who make $17,000 pay nearly 13 percent of their income in state and local taxes, and those who make more than $489,000 pay less than 2 percent. Amendment 5 would permanently enshrine this discrimination in our Constitution.
PolitiFact: Do Trump Tariffs Cost More Than Affordable Care Act Taxes?
October 12, 2018
Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, added that regardless of imports volume, we don’t know how they will get passed through by the companies paying them, either. And not everyone has to pay them -- consumers could simply redirect their demand.
WBOC16: Incorporating in Delaware: The Perks and Pitfalls
October 12, 2018
Some critics of Delaware LLCs say until Delaware's corporate code is adjusted, criminal activity will continue to exist in Delaware's corporations. Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, authored a report entitled "Delaware: An Onshore Tax Haven."
Louisiana Budget Project: Federal Tax Cut Worsening Racial Wealth Divide
October 12, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
While President Trump and Republicans in Congress heralded the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 as a major tax cut for the middle class, the numbers don’t bear that out. A new analysis by researchers at Prosperity Now and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reveals just how much of the federal tax cut benefits went to the highest income earners, and the crumbs that were left over for low and middle-class households.
The Guardian: I’m Undocumented. It’s Time to Reveal What That Actually Means
October 12, 2018
Nationwide, the amount of taxes that the Internal Revenue Service collects from undocumented workers ranges from almost $2.2m in Montana, which has an estimated undocumented population of 4,000, to more than $3.1bn in California, which is home to more than 3 million undocumented immigrants. According to the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8% of their incomes in state and local taxes on average. To put that in perspective, the top 1% of taxpayers pay an average nationwide effective tax rate of just 5.4%.
TalkPoverty: North Carolina Legislators Want to Add Tax Breaks for the Rich to the State Constitution
October 11, 2018
“Since 2012, when Republicans took full control of the legislature and governorship for the first time in modern history, they’ve been on a tax cutting rampage,” said Meg Wiehe, a North Carolina native and deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The state will be about $3.6 billion shorter in revenue than it would have been otherwise, which is a pretty significant difference in a state with a general fund of just around $21 billion.”
Law360: TCJA Increases Racial, Economic Tax Divides, Report Says
October 11, 2018
The recent federal tax overhaul disproportionately benefits white households over households of color, increasing the wealth gap not just along income lines but along racial lines as well, according to a...
New York Times: White Americans Gain the Most From Trump’s Tax Cuts, a Report Finds
October 11, 2018
The tax cuts that President Trump signed into law last year are disproportionately helping white Americans over African-Americans and Latinos, a disparity that reflects longstanding racial economic inequality in the United States and the choices that Republicans made in crafting the law.
NPR: It’s Been 25 Years Since The Federal Gas Tax Went Up
October 5, 2018
Yet over those 25 years, the cost of building and maintaining roads, bridges and transit has shot up, leaving the highway trust fund, which pays the federal portion of highway and transit projects, running on empty. “The whole reason this tax exists is to keep our roads paved and to keep our bridges from falling down,” says Davis. “And to do that effectively, it needs to collect a sustainable amount of revenue over time to cover the cost of paving roads and maintaining bridges, and it can’t do that if it’s just not updated for decades at a time.”
Washington Post: How big developers like Trump benefit from web of tax breaks
October 4, 2018
[Real estate investors] can fall behind on their debts and still face fewer tax penalties for having the debt forgiven than other kinds of investors, according to Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Trump took advantage of that, Wamhoff says, when he couldn’t repay debts on his Atlantic City casinos in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Fiscal Times: What Trump’s Family Finances Tell Us About the Tax System
October 3, 2018
“The key takeaway,” said Alan Essig, director of the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “is that the wealthy and powerful abide by a different set of rules than the rest of us. … During his presidential campaign, President Trump called for closing the types of loopholes that allow some wealthy people to get […]
The New Yorker: The Trump Family’s Tax Dodging Is Symptomatic of a Larger Problem
October 3, 2018
This experience points to an enduring scandal that goes well beyond the Trumps. “The key takeaway from the New York Times article . . . is that the wealthy and powerful abide by a different set of rules than the rest of us,” Alan Essig, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan […]
The Post and Courier: Some Valuable Downtown Charleston Land Now Comes with Tax Breaks
October 2, 2018
“Even if the tax breaks drive some new investment into low-income areas, this does not guarantee that these investments will ultimately benefit low-income families within the opportunity zones,” said the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “In fact, additional investment driven by opportunity zones could have the unintended effect of fueling higher real estate prices […]
Politico: Morning Tax
October 1, 2018
Today also marks 25 years since the last federal gas tax increase, which was raised to its current 18.3 cents per gallon in 1993. Plenty of people have talked about hiking the gas tax again over the last quarter-century — even potentially President Donald Trump — without much success, as Republicans have largely opposed the […]
BTC Report: Income tax rate cap amendment is costly for taxpayers, communities
September 28, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Imposing an arbitrary income tax cap in the North Carolina Constitution could fundamentally compromise our state’s ability to fund our schools, roads, and public health, as well as raise the cost of borrowing. This could all happen even as the tax load shifts even further onto middle- and low-income taxpayers and the state’s highest income taxpayers — the top 1 percent — continue to benefit from recent tax changes since 2013.
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.