ITEP Work in Action
American University Center for Latin American & Latino Studies: Mass Deportations Could Create a US Recession
August 27, 2024
Irregular immigration is one of the most important issues in the presidential campaigns of the candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. On the one hand, the Biden administration, of which Vice President Harris is part, restricted the number of asylum seekers entering the country, and on the other hand, Republicans are promising the “largest mass deportation program in US history” if they win the White House this fall.
ITEP’s Carl Davis: Pyramids, Cascades, and the Taxation of Business Inputs
August 26, 2024
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis gave this presentation to the New Mexico Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee on August 23, 2024. View the slides here.
America’s Voice: Immigrants Contribute a Lot – Just Ask the Researchers
August 13, 2024
Recent research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals that undocumented immigrants contributed an astounding $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Six of the most immigrant-populous states accounted for a combined $21.1 billion of these contributions, with California leading the way at $8.5 billion in tax revenue. The research further showed that these workers pay into programs that they’re barred from accessing, and in most areas pay higher state and local tax rates than their wealthiest neighbors.
Every Texan: Undocumented Texans Paid $4.9 billion in State and Local Taxes in 2022.
August 8, 2024
Undocumented immigrants are essential contributors to Texas’ economy and robust job growth. Regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, immigrant families pay state and local taxes to support vital public services that benefit all of us, such as schools and colleges, roads, parks, and libraries. A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) confirms in 2022 1.9 million undocumented Texans paid a hefty $4.9 billion in state and local taxes.
Florida Policy Institute: Florida Should Welcome Immigrants
August 1, 2024
New research confirms that immigrants without a documented status still contribute economically, despite most not being eligible for any public services or benefits. Many immigrants without a documented status pay taxes — primarily via sales and excise taxes on purchases.[1] The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s (ITEP’s) latest report details the state and local taxes immigrants without a documented status contribute throughout the United States. Nationwide, ITEP finds that for every 1 million undocumented immigrant residents, revenue for public services increases by $8.9 billion.
Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice: How Hawaiʻi’s Hardworking Undocumented Immigrants Support Our Economy and Communities
August 1, 2024
Undocumented immigrants work hard in Hawaiʻi and play a vital role in our economy, boosting both our general excise and individual income tax revenue. This is despite the fact that it is more difficult for them to file taxes than for other Hawaiʻi residents. A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) lifts up the significant tax contributions that these immigrants make to our federal, state and local governments through the taxes they pay each year.
Immigration Research Initiative: People Who Are Undocumented: Occupations, Taxes Paid, and Long-Term Economic Benefits
July 30, 2024
As a July 2024 report from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows, people who are undocumented paid $97 billion in taxes in 2022. A total of $34 billion comes from payroll taxes to cover programs that exclude people who are undocumented from getting benefits: $25.6 billion paid to Social Security, $6.4 billion to Medicare, and, through contributions of their employers, $1.8 billion to unemployment insurance (which is a joint federal and state program). In other words, workers who are undocumented have wages withheld or employers are required to pay for programs that benefit other Americans, but which…
The Volcker Alliance: Benefit or Burden
July 3, 2024
The issue paper addresses how US states hand out massive tax breaks every year to advance policy goals, such as aiding low-income families, spurring business investment and job creation, or mirroring the federal tax code. Known broadly as tax expenditures, these exemptions, credits, abatements, and other measures reduce state revenues by an estimated $1 trillion a year, almost three times their 2021 total state expenditures on education. Such tax expenditures, which often suffer from lax government oversight, may be leaving states short on revenue at time when the effects of climate change and the cost of deferred maintenance means that…
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions: By the Wealthy, for the Wealthy: The Coordinated Attacks on Public Education in the United States
June 26, 2024
Public education is the cornerstone of opportunity in the United States. No matter who they are, where they live, or how much money their parents make, every child in this nation has a fundamental right to a public education. But in America today, the public education system—one of the cornerstones of democracy—is under attack.
Americans for Tax Fairness: Engine of Inequality: A Flood of Corporate Profits Is Enriching Wealthy Shareholders Through Stock Buybacks and Dividends, At The Expense of Workers and The Public
June 26, 2024
All but a handful of 280 large, profitable corporations spent more money making their wealthy shareholders richer through dividends and stock buybacks than they paid in federal income taxes in the five years after the enactment of the Trump-GOP tax law, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness. And it wasn’t even close: altogether the stockholder payouts outstripped tax payments by 7-to-1, $4.4 trillion vs. $608 billion. This heavy bias towards shareholder payments for wealthy investors over tax payments for public services exacerbates economic inequality and promotes political instability, as increasingly frustrated American workers struggle to get by while…
The Hamilton Project: The Austere US Safety Net for Poor, Non-Elderly Adults Who Are Not Raising Children and Do Not Receive Disability Benefits
June 20, 2024
The U.S. safety net has grown significantly stronger for children and elderly adults over the past half century. However, the story is starkly different for non-elderly adults who are not raising children and do not receive Supplemental Security Income disability benefits or Social Security benefits, Robert Greenstein argues in his Hamilton Project paper. In 2017, this group numbered nearly 106 million people, or nearly 33 percent of the U.S. noninstitutionalized population.
Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families: The Definition of Regressive
June 20, 2024
Today the Legislature, in a special session called by the Governor, begins discussion of Senate Bill 1. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, this bill will eliminate at least $450 million in tax revenue every year from general revenue. This revenue is essential for services important to all Arkansans, such as education and health services. What’s more, this tax giveaway prevents strategic investment in our state to help all Arkansans thrive. We deserve investment from our elected officials, not a race to the bottom.
Roosevelt Institute: When Tax Policy Discriminates: The TCJA’s Impact on Black Taxpayers
June 18, 2024
We found that black taxpayers who looked like their white counterparts in terms of these and other demographic factors paid higher taxes because the IRC favors certain behaviors and benefits that are closed to black people. For example, black people were then (and are now) less likely to receive valuable employer-provided tax benefits such as the opportunity to save for retirement tax-free, up to $50,000 of tax-free life insurance, and reimbursement for employee business expenses. A long history of federal government actions created and sustained redlining, making black people less likely to own homes and thus barred from receiving the…
Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice: Hawaiʻi’s Elected Leaders Again Buy-In to Costly “Trickle-Down” Myth
June 14, 2024
When it comes to tax policy, Hawaiʻi’s 2024 legislative session was largely defined by a single bill—House Bill 2404. Signed into law as Act 046 by Governor Green on June 3, the bill enacts sweeping tax cuts for people of all income levels, but most of the benefit goes to those at the top of the income scale.
Institute for Policy Studies: A Fair Tax Agenda for Wall Street
June 13, 2024
Thank you, Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the committee, for the invitation to participate in this important hearing. I am Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent center for research and action founded in 1963. I also co-edit the Institute’s Inequality.org web site.
The FACT Coalition: FACT Sheet: Congress Should Repeal a Wasteful Tax Break for Big Tech
June 11, 2024
The 2017 tax reform massively reshaped how U.S. multinationals are taxed on their foreign income, including through the application of a global minimum tax that grants corporations a substantial discount on their foreign profits. This discount gave big multinationals new incentives to stash their most valuable intangible assets – intellectual property like patents, trademarks, and other highly mobile properties – in foreign tax havens to avoid taxation at the full U.S. domestic rate. In an attempt to balance this perverse incentive, the 2017 law sought to bring investment back to the United States through a provision known as the Foreign-Derived Intangible…
Policy Matters Ohio: Income Tax Extremism Is a Gift to the Wealthy. Repairing the Damage Would Cost Us All
June 7, 2024
Ohioans deserve an equitable tax system that supports the public goods and services that enable all of us to thrive. Unfortunately, that is not the system we have today. After two decades of tax handouts to corporations and the rich, our upside-down tax system increasingly perpetuates inequality while failing to adequately fund services like education and health care. This all pales in comparison to the extreme proposal from lawmakers that would eliminate the state’s personal income tax.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: States Should Reverse Course on Defunding Public Education Through Private School Vouchers and Property Tax Cuts
June 5, 2024
During this year’s legislative sessions, at least one in three states are considering or have enacted school voucher expansions alongside broad, untargeted property tax cuts. Over half of states have already enacted deep personal and corporate income tax cuts in the last three years. These policies will result in under-resourced public schools, worse student outcomes, and, over time, weaker communities.
Colorado General Assembly: HB24-1311 Family Affordability Tax Credit
May 31, 2024
Gov. Polis of Colorado signed the bill expanding its Child Tax Credit, which cites ITEP’s research on the second page of the bill text. Read the bill and its status.
International Journal of Economics, Business and Management Research: The U.S. Federal and State Tax Simplification and Reform for Senior Citizens
May 21, 2024
The U.S. Federal and many State Governments provide social security tax deductions, either partial or all, for senior citizens. However, tax systems still require those whose incomes exceed standard deductions to report and calculate their income taxes. Usually, senior citizen's income sources are from social security benefits, 401K retirement funds, IRA, annuities, pensions, and/or others. This paper provides a linear tax rate and tax formula to simplify federal and state social security and retirement taxes compared with the existing complicated tax calculation systems. This research also provides a reform proposal to combine all taxable incomes for qualified seniors who have…
Democrats: President Biden Delivers for Wisconsin While Trump Backs Billionaires Over Working Families
May 21, 2024
Today, President Biden’s visit to Racine, Wisconsin will underscore how his economic agenda is uplifting Wisconsin families by creating good-paying jobs, cutting costs, and building the middle class. Just last week, Trump spent his short time in Wisconsin lying about President Biden’s economic wins, because he knows that his only defense against President Biden’s successful record is to lie in a desperate attempt to hide how he failed Wisconsin families.
Senate Committee on the Budget: Extending Trump Tax Cuts Would Add $4.6 Trillion to the Deficit, CBO Finds
May 21, 2024
According to the latest report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the Trump tax cuts for the next 10 years—as Republicans have proposed—would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit.
Bipartisan Policy Center: Credit Where Credit’s Due: Engaging State and Local Governments in Refundable Tax Credit Design and Administration
May 16, 2024
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) are two of the most effective anti-poverty tools in the United States, helping to boost household economic security while incentivizing work for millions of Americans each year. Over the past three years in particular, attention increased on the interactions between state and federal tax policy as states grappled with the EITC’s and the CTC’s rapid temporary expansion, as well as changes to complementary federal policies and programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes at the federal level to these two credits highlighted critical challenges facing policymakers and the public…
Economic Policy Institute: The Evolution of the Southern Economic Development Strategy
May 6, 2024
The Southern economic development model has failed to create shared prosperity in the region. In fact, this model was deliberately designed to do the opposite—to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible. This report examines the racist roots of the model and provides the necessary context to challenge the enduring […]
Center for American Progress: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Failed To Deliver Promised Benefits
May 1, 2024
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made sweeping changes to America’s tax laws. Signed into law by then-President Donald Trump and approved with only Republican support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the TCJA permanently slashed corporate tax rates and changed the way the nation taxes the profits of U.S. multinational corporations.1 It also temporarily cut personal income and estate taxes, changes that largely benefited the wealth.
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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