Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

ITEP Work in Action

ITEP’s Kamolika Das’ Testimony to the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission

January 11, 2025

ITEP’s Kamolika Das testified in front of the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission on January 9, 2025. The commission has been charged to examine the city’s overall tax system and propose ways to make it more inclusive, equitable, and growth oriented, and it has been considering changes to the city’s net profits tax and business income […]

2024 Economic Report of the President

January 10, 2025

The Economic Report of the President (ERP) is an annual report produced by the Council of Economic Advisers. An important vehicle for presenting the Administration’s domestic and international economic policies, it provides an overview of the nation’s economic progress with text and extensive data appendices. The 2024 report cites a 2021 blog written by ITEP’s […]

Brookings Institution: Scaling Up Prenatal and Infant Cash Prescriptions to Eradicate Deep Infant Poverty in the United States

December 22, 2024

The United States is exceptional among wealthy nations in its high rate of child poverty. Even more so, the U.S. is known for its high level of deep child poverty—children in families with incomes less than half the poverty line. Read more.

Georgia Budget & Policy Institute: From Barriers to Bridges: How Fines and Fees Reform Can Help Boost Economic Security

December 22, 2024

Excessive local government reliance on fines and fees is tied to persistent barriers to economic security. Policies that lift these barriers could open gateways for more Georgians to achieve workforce mobility free from criminal legal system entanglement. Read more.

Hawai’i Appleseed: How a Second Trump Presidency Could Impact the Pocket Books of Hawaiʻi’s Working Families

December 22, 2024

With President-elect Trump preparing to return to the White House in 2025, it’s worth examining how his proposed policies could impact Hawaiʻi’s  economy, tax system and the household budgets of local working families. Read more.

Accountable.US: Trump IRS Pick Billy Long Took $248,500 From 17 Top Tax-Avoiders

December 19, 2024

Accountable.US has found that Long’s Congressional campaign committees took $248,500 from 17 top tax-avoiding corporations. These 17 companies paid an astonishing average effective tax rate of -0.4% on over $289 billion in collective profits they made in the first five years of the 2017 Trump tax cuts—which Long voted for. Read more.

Gov. Jay Inslee: Gov. Inslee Releases Future-Focused Budget Proposal

December 18, 2024

Today, Gov. Jay Inslee released a balanced budget proposal that protects progress on the programs and services that working families and businesses depend on — public safety, education, early learning, housing and behavioral health. Read more.

Sen. Warren: ITEP Data Shows Trump’s Tax Proposals Won’t Help Working Families

November 20, 2024

Sen. Warren cited ITEP’s research at a November 20, 2024 hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. To read her remarks, click here. To read the research, click here.

New Jersey Policy Perspective: Fair and Square: Changing New Jersey’s Tax Code to Promote Equity and Fiscal Responsibility

November 14, 2024

Reforming New Jersey's tax system would reduce income inequality and provide revenues needed for public investments to make the state more affordable. 

Economic Security Project: The Equity & Prosperity Agenda: A Tax Plan to Promote a Fair, Inclusive, and Competitive Economy

October 31, 2024

The expiration of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2025 is a critical opportunity to set economic policy for the next decade. The TCJA has been an abject failure for American families. Every year since it passed in 2017, it has diverted taxpayer money to exorbitant tax breaks for the ultrawealthy and powerful corporations while everyday Americans have struggled to make ends meet. The 2025 tax fight is our opportunity to promote competition and curb corporate concentration, lower costs for working families, raise the revenue we need to invest in core priorities and promote a democratized, multiracial economy.

California Budget & Policy Center: California’s Undocumented Residents Make Significant Tax Contributions

October 29, 2024

California’s undocumented residents contribute nearly $8.5 billion in taxes, playing a crucial role in supporting public services while remaining excluded from essential programs. Read more.

ITEP’s Brakeyshia Samms on Race and the 2017 Trump Tax Law

October 28, 2024

On October 25, 2024, ITEP Policy Analyst Brakeyshia Samms discussed race and the 2017 Trump tax law on the webinar “The 2025 Sunsetting of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA): Tax Justice on the Frontlines,” which was hosted by the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil Rights & Social Justice. Slides can be downloaded here […]

ITEP’s Eli Byerly-Duke on Oklahoma’s Sales Tax Relief Credit

October 28, 2024

On October 23, 2024, ITEP Policy Analyst Eli Byerly-Duke presented to an interim study in the Oklahoma House focused on modernizing the Sales Tax Relief Credit. Click here for slides Click here for video (his remarks begin around the 1:06:00 mark)

AFSCME: Trump’s Tax Plans Would Benefit the Rich, Harris’ Plan Would Benefit Everyone Else

October 24, 2024

Donald Trump’s tax plan would cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, whereas Kamala Harris’ plan would cut taxes for everyone but the wealthy. That’s the takeaway from a new analysis of the two candidates’ tax plans. Read more.

Accountable.us: Top 15 Corporate Beneficiaries of Trump Tax Giveaway Law Have Since Spent $839B on Shareholder Handouts

October 23, 2024

The 15 largest corporate beneficiaries of the Trump tax law used their savings to collectively spend $839 billion on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends in the years following the law’s passage. Read more.

American Immigration Council: Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy

October 18, 2024

In recent months, leading politicians and policymakers have renewed calls for mass deportations of immigrants from the United States. While similar promises have been made in the past without coming to fruition—during the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, Donald Trump pledged to create a “deportation force” to round up undocumented immigrants —mass deportation now occupies a standing role in the rhetoric of leading immigration hawks. To cite just one example, former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Tom Homan has promised “a historic deportation operation” should a hawkish administration return to power. While some plans have envisioned a one-time,…

Washington Center for Equitable Growth: The Promise of Equitable and Pro-Growth Tax Reform

October 16, 2024

The impending expiration of large portions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2025 presents federal policymakers with a significant opportunity to reform the federal tax code in the United States. Too often, political openings for pro-growth tax reform have instead been transformed into opportunities to introduce new tax cuts for those at the top of the income and wealth distribution. Proponents of these tax cuts usually defend their actions by invoking a now-widely discredited “trickle-down” theory of economic growth.

North Carolina Budget & Tax Center: North Carolinians Deserve the Credit

October 11, 2024

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.

Sen. Warren: Warren, Dean Press CocaCola, PepsiCo, and General Mills on “Shrinkflation” Price Gouging and Tax Dodging

October 9, 2024

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) wrote to the CEOs of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Mills, pressing their executives on the companies’ pattern of profiteering off consumers, both through “shrinkflation” and dodging taxes on the profits they made from that price gouging.

Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy: Idaho’s Recent String of Income Tax Cuts Jeopardizes Investments in Public Services

October 4, 2024

Every year, Idaho tax dollars are spent to ensure families receive a good education, live in safe communities, experience good health, and drive on safe roads. However, over the past four years, lawmakers have passed deep and costly tax cuts and reforms. These cuts were made in response to temporary budget surpluses that were largely driven by federal pandemic relief, but they have long term consequences. The changes to Idaho’s tax code —which are permanent and tilted toward wealthy households and corporations — weaken state revenues by growing amounts over time, limiting the state’s ability to maintain support for schools…

Economic Policy Institute: The U.S. Benefits From Immigration but Policy Reforms Needed to Maximize Gains

October 4, 2024

Immigration has been a source of strength for the U.S. economy and has great potential to boost it even more, but the current U.S. immigration policy regime squanders too many of its potential benefits by depriving immigrants of their full rights as workers and granting employers too much power to manipulate the system. It is crystal clear that immigration expands U.S. gross domestic product and is good for growth. And immigration overall has led to better, not worse, wages and work opportunities for U.S.-born workers. Yet, it is also clear that when workers are denied full and equal labor and…

ITEP’s Neva Butkus Discusses Property Taxes in Indiana

October 3, 2024

On September 30, Policy Analyst Neva Butkus discussed Indiana property taxes and how Hoosiers could benefit from a circuit breaker policy at an event hosted by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute and Prosperity Indiana. Check out her slides here, and an article on the panel here.

New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute: Federal Policymakers Will Consider Tax Changes Benefitting Higher-Income Granite Staters in 2025

October 2, 2024

Federal lawmakers will face several key fiscal policy deadlines in 2025. These deadlines include, but are not limited to, the federal government’s debt limit taking effect in January 2025; the end of the current spending caps on the federal government’s annual budget in September 2025; the sunsetting of enhanced health care marketplace subsidies, which provided an estimated $38.4 million to Granite Staters in 2023 to help them afford individual health coverage, at the end of 2025; and the expiration of key components of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) after December 2025.

Sen. Warren: Warren, Whitehouse, Casar, Lawmakers Slam 35 Companies for Paying Their Executives More Than They Pay in Federal Income Taxes

September 30, 2024

U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Representative Greg Casar (D-Texas) led their colleagues in slamming 35 major companies that have been paying their executives more than they pay in federal income taxes. The lawmakers point to this as an additional reason why Congress must reform the tax code in 2025 to […]

Policy Matters Ohio: The Great Ohio Tax Shift, 2024

September 27, 2024

Major tax policy changes enacted by Ohio lawmakers since Governor Taft’s 2005 State Budget Bill ask families with the lowest incomes to pay more, the wealthy to pay less, and the state to forgo the resources it needs to ensure the prosperity of its residents. Those are the conclusions of a new analysis conducted for Policy Matters by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

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.