Corporate tax dodging and executive pay packages have both gotten so far out of control that a significant number of major U.S. corporations are paying their top executives more than they’re paying Uncle Sam in federal income taxes.
ITEP Work in Action
Advocates and policymakers at the state and federal levels rely on ITEP’s analytic capabilities to inform their debates on proposed tax policy changes. In any given year, ITEP fields requests for analyses of policies in 25 or more states. ITEP also works with national partners to provide analyses of federal tax policy proposals. This section highlights reports that use ITEP analyses to make a compelling case for progressive tax reforms.
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ITEP Work in Action March 13, 2024 Institute for Policy Studies: More for Them, Less for Us
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ITEP Work in Action March 13, 2024 Maine Center for Economic Policy: The Case for Corporate Transparency
Mainers work hard to support themselves and their communities. They pay taxes to fund the services communities need to thrive, like education, health care, and infrastructure. But it is increasingly clear that big corporations aren’t holding up their end of the bargain by contributing their fair share. They deploy complicated tax loopholes and accounting schemes to avoid paying what they owe, using their money and power to ensure laws in place don’t expose the tricks they’re playing.
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ITEP Work in Action March 11, 2024 ITEP’s Marco Guzman Testifies in Favor of Tax Fairness Bills in Connecticut
Good afternoon, Senator Fonfara, Representative Horn, and members of the Committee, and thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Marco Guzman and I’m a senior policy analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, and we’re a nonprofit research organization that focuses on state, local, and federal tax policy issues.
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ITEP Work in Action March 7, 2024 The White House Fact Sheet: President Biden Is Fighting to Reduce the Deficit, Cut Taxes for Working Families, and Invest in America by Making Big Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share
President Biden is fighting to make the tax system fairer while Republicans continue to push tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. The President’s plan delivers tax cuts for… -
ITEP Work in Action March 6, 2024 Common Good Iowa: Killing Democracy by Superminority
Iowa’s tax structure has long favored the wealthiest Iowans and corporations, and tax cuts passed in 2022 are making inequities worse. The average millionaire will see a cut of $62,000 a year. In the middle, Iowans earning $40,000 to $60,000 will see an average cut of $300, or about $6 a week. Most with incomes under $40,000 will see no cut at all.
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ITEP Work in Action March 4, 2024 ITEP’s Kamolika Das Testifies on Pennsylvania’s Upside-Down Tax Code
Below is written testimony delivered by ITEP Local Policy Director Kamolika Das before the Pennsylvania House Finance Subcommittee on Tax Modernization & Reform on March 1, 2024. Good afternoon and… -
ITEP Work in Action March 4, 2024 Colorado Department of Revenue: Property Tax Circuit Breaker Programs
Because property taxes are based upon property values, they are not as strongly connected to an ability to pay as the income tax. This can be particularly burdensome when income changes as a result of job loss, divorce, illness, or retirement. As a result, property taxes tend to be regressive.
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ITEP Work in Action March 4, 2024 Massachusetts Budget & Policy Center: Ending the Tax Penalty Against Working Immigrants
In recent years, lawmakers have enacted some important legislation helping Massachusetts residents, regardless of their immigration status, to take full part in commerce and civic life. Laws providing access to drivers’ licenses and in-state tuition, for instance, have opened opportunities that support employment and advance economic growth. Yet tens of thousands of workers, and their families, who pay taxes in Massachusetts are prevented from receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) because they are ineligible for a Social Security Number. Extending eligibility to all workers filing taxes, regardless of their immigration status, would increase the impact of Massachusetts’ EITC, help expand economic opportunity, and support low- and moderate-income families struggling to afford Massachusetts’ high cost of living.
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ITEP Work in Action February 27, 2024 Movement for Black Lives (M4BL): Economic Justice
We demand economic justice for all and a reconstruction of the economy to ensure Black communities have collective ownership, not merely access.
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ITEP Work in Action February 14, 2024 Better Wyoming: Somehow, Some Way, Wyoming Property Tax Relief is Coming
Buying a home is a goal for most hard-working Wyoming families, and achieving it is a cause to celebrate. But many homeowners in recent years have opened their annual property tax bills and been jolted by huge increases. In fact, residential property tax bills in Wyoming have gone up by an average of more than 80 percent over the past six years.
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ITEP Work in Action February 12, 2024 Common Good Iowa: Both Governor’s, Senate Plans Worsen Tax Inequalities
Iowans have traditionally valued expanding opportunity, caring for neighbors and a strong sense of fair play. Tax-cut proposals at the Iowa Statehouse from Governor Kim Reynolds and legislative leaders turn these Iowa values upside down. They would drastically restrict revenue needed to fund critical services such as education, health care, public safety and environmental quality. The Senate bill, SSB 3141, would set out to fully eliminate the income tax, which until recently has funded roughly half of the state budget. By targeting benefits to the wealthiest Iowans, the plans would throw an already inequitable tax system further out of balance.
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ITEP Work in Action February 12, 2024 Oklahoma Policy Institute: Economic Projections for Asylum Seekers and New Immigrants in Oklahoma
Immigration is hardly a new social trend in the state of Oklahoma. Of the four million people living in the state, 243,000 are immigrants, or six percent of the total population, according to the 2022 American Community Survey.
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ITEP Work in Action February 12, 2024 Audio: ITEP’s Miles Trinidad Talks About Oregon’s Upside-Down Tax Code
We’re talking taxes today on Policy for the People, specifically from the vantage point of the Oregonians with the fewest resources, those who are struggling the most to make ends meet. In our first segment, we hear about a brand new tax credit in Oregon designed to shore up the lowest-income families with young children in our state. Tyler Mac Innis of the Oregon Center for Public Policy explains who qualifies for the Oregon Kids’ Credit and why the creation of this new tax credit is a very good thing. But despite the positive development that the Oregon Kids’ Credit represents, Oregon’s tax system as a whole is one that continues to weigh more heavily on the lowest income families than anyone else. Miles Trinidad of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy discusses the recently released report Who Pays? (https://itep.org/whopays-7th-edition/)
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ITEP Work in Action February 7, 2024 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: High-Income People Who Received Large Net Tax Cuts in 2017 Law Don’t Need a New SALT Tax Cut
The House is poised to consider a new tax bill that would raise the cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), giving another large tax cut to the same group of rich people who benefitted the most as a share of their incomes from the 2017 tax law. Over half of the benefits would go to those in the 95th to 99th percentiles for income — the biggest winners of the 2017 tax law — according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). This group doesn’t need another tax cut, and policymakers should reject the bill.
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ITEP Work in Action February 7, 2024 New Mexico Voices for Children: New Mexico has the Most-Improved Tax Fairness of Any State
New Mexico now has the ninth most progressive tax system in the nation as ranked by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s recently updated Who Pays? report on tax incidence. That same report showed New Mexico as making the most progress toward tax fairness in the nation!
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ITEP Work in Action February 6, 2024 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Vermont Can Invest in Brighter Future With Targeted Income Tax Measure
According to estimates from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the proposal would fall almost exclusively on the state’s richest 1 percent of households, or those with average incomes of about $1.8 million a year.[2] The remainder of the state’s residents — who to be clear, already themselves contribute significant shares of revenue through existing taxes on income, sales, and property[3] — would see no change.
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ITEP Work in Action February 5, 2024 Video: ITEP’s Carl Davis Discusses ‘Who Pays?’ at Rhode Island Revenue Roundtable
ITEP researcher Carl Davis joins the Economic Progress Institute (EPI) for Rhode Island’s Revenue Roundtable.
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ITEP Work in Action January 30, 2024 Rep. Rosa DeLauro: Fact Sheets on Tax Deal
“The tax deal fails on equity,” said Congresswoman DeLauro. “It delivers huge tax cuts for giant corporations while denying middle class families the economic security they had under the expanded, monthly Child Tax Credit. It also leaves the poorest families behind because of a policy choice. At a time when a majority of American voters believe tax on big corporations should be increased, there is no reason we should be providing corporations a tax cut while only giving families pennies.”
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ITEP Work in Action January 29, 2024 Policy Matters Ohio: New Data Show Just How Upside-Down Ohio’s Tax Code Is
In 2023, the lowest-paid Ohioans spent more than twice as much of their income on state and local taxes than the highest-paid, according to a new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
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ITEP Work in Action January 29, 2024 American Progress: DACA Recipients Bolster Social Security and Medicare
Eight years of survey data have shown that DACA recipients’ average reported hourly wages have increased by 137.2 percent, from $11.92 per hour in 2015 to $28.27 per hour in 2022. This not only benefits recipients and their families but also the entire country: According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, thanks to DACA, recipients are able to contribute more in taxes as a result of increased employment rates, earnings, and tax compliance rates.
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ITEP Work in Action January 29, 2024 ITEP’s Carl Davis: Who Pays Vermont Taxes?
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis gave a presentation on Vermont’s tax system to that state’s Ways and Means Committee on January 25, 2024. Click here for the slide deck. -
ITEP Work in Action January 24, 2024 Hawai’i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice: Rebalance Hawaii’s Upside-Down Tax Code to Achieve Prosperity for All
Our state tax code makes the situation worse. A comprehensive analysis of state and local taxes across the country shows that Hawaii is the third-worst state when it comes to taxing struggling working families. Households in the lowest income category pay an effective tax rate of 14.1%, while the richest 1% pay an effective tax rate of 10.1%
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ITEP Work in Action January 23, 2024 Oregon Center for Public Policy: Oregon’s Tax System is Fundamentally Unfair, but We Can Fix It
If you were designing a tax system from scratch, who would you tax at a higher rate: a low-income family struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table, or a rich family making way more money than they spend?
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ITEP Work in Action January 23, 2024 The Commonwealth Institute: How the Governor’s Proposal Increases Taxes for Low-Income Families, Gives Significant Cuts to the Wealthy
When we all pitch in our fair share, we can invest in the programs and services that help everyone to thrive, like public education, affordable housing, and more. But Virginia’s tax code is upside-down, where those with the most pay the least taxes as a share of income.
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ITEP Work in Action January 16, 2024 Testimony of Prosperity Indiana’s Andrew Bradley Before the Indiana State and Local Tax Review Task Force
On January 10, Andrew Bradley, Policy Director at Prosperity Indiana, testified before the State and Local Tax Review Task Force of the Indiana General Assembly. During his presentation, Bradley highlighted…