Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Corporate Taxes

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Impacts of the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act

February 2, 2024 • By Joe Hughes, Steve Wamhoff

The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act passed by the House of Representatives on January 31 is a compromise between lawmakers who want to address child poverty and lawmakers who want to expand the Trump tax cuts for corporations and therefore includes provisions that do both. It also offsets the costs of those […]

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Ongoing Use of Offshore Tax Havens Demonstrates the Need for the Global Minimum Tax

January 17, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff

Key Findings To avoid taxation, American corporations use accounting gimmicks that make profits appear to be earned in foreign jurisdictions which tax corporate profits very lightly or not at all. In 2020, American corporations claimed profits in 15 of these jurisdictions that were often far too high to be possible. For example, in four jurisdictions […]

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Proposed Tax Deal Would Help Millions of Kids with Child Tax Credit Expansion While Extending Damaging Corporate Tax Breaks

January 16, 2024 • By Joe Hughes

On January 16, Congressional tax writers officially announced the details of a tax policy agreement. The deal includes expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to improve access for low- and middle-income families as well as expansions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts for businesses. The agreement also includes bipartisan tax priorities tax provisions for […]

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The Latest Convoluted Arguments in Favor of Rich People Not Paying Taxes

November 13, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

Two Senate hearings last week focused on how the richest Americans are avoiding and evading taxes in ways that ordinary Americans could hardly imagine. All the experts brought in to testify seemed to agree that the House GOP’s recent tactic of “paying for” a spending proposal by cutting IRS funding makes no sense because it […]

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On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Critics Take Aim at ITEP – and Miss

October 25, 2023 • By Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff

In identifying companies that avoid taxes, ITEP presented evidence that our federal corporate income tax was not working the way most Americans think it should work. The public and lawmakers paid attention, including President Biden who then made the case that this demonstrated the need for reform. As a result, Congress enacted the corporate minimum tax, to make the tax system a bit closer to what most Americans want it to be. If you look closely at this, you might just see an example of democracy working.

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Intuit Receives Millions in Federal Subsidies While Arguing IRS Direct File Would Be Too Costly

October 24, 2023 • By Joe Hughes, Spandan Marasini

The tax preparation industry has for years lobbied to prevent the IRS from providing a tool that would allow Americans to file their taxes online for free. Recent public disclosures from Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and the leader of the pack, show that tax breaks the company claims for doing “research” might be larger […]

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The Campaign by Democratic Former Officials to Stop Taxes on the Wealthy

October 6, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

One of the most attention-grabbing anti-tax campaigns at work today is called SAFE, which stands for Saving America’s Family Enterprises. But it might as well mean Saving Aristocrats From Everything given the outfit’s knack for opposing any national proposal to limit special tax advantages that only the wealthy enjoy. The basic approach of SAFE is […]

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Moore Case Could Enrich Tax-Avoiding Multinational Corporations – and the SCOTUS Justices Who Own Their Stock

September 27, 2023 • By Matthew Gardner

The Moore v. United States case that will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court could jeopardize at least $270 billion if SCOTUS finds the entire transition tax to be unconstitutional. The decision could also invalidate other important parts of the current tax system while preempting progressive wealth tax proposals. Such an outcome would represent one of the costliest—and most ethically questionable - Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history.

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Supreme Corporate Tax Giveaway: Who Would Benefit from the Roberts Court Striking Down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax?

September 27, 2023 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini

The Supreme Court is set to hear what could become one of the most important tax cases in a century. If decided broadly—with a ruling that strikes down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax for corporations, effectively making it unconstitutional to tax unrealized income—the Roberts Court’s decision in Moore v. US could stretch far beyond the plaintiffs themselves and would put in legal jeopardy many laws that prevent corporations and individuals from avoiding taxes and level the economic playing field.

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Kyrsten Sinema’s Latest Fight to Protect Tax Breaks for Private Equity

September 15, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

Sen. Sinema's bill to stop a seemingly arcane business tax increase that was enacted as part of the 2017 Trump tax law would be hugely beneficial to the private equity industry.

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Celebrating One Year Since the Landmark Inflation Reduction Act

August 14, 2023 • By Joe Hughes

The Inflation Reduction Act was a course correction from decades of tax cuts that primarily went to the richest Americans and left the rest of us with budget shortfalls that conservative lawmakers now seek to plug with cuts to Social Security and Medicare. For the first time in generations we are finally asking those who have benefited the most from our economy to contribute back.

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Corporations Reap Billions in Tax Breaks Under ‘Bonus Depreciation’

June 29, 2023 • By Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff

Since TCJA expanded tax breaks for “accelerated depreciation” starting in 2018, it has reduced taxes by nearly $67 billion for the 25 profitable corporations that benefited the most. Congress is now looking at extending this policy.

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Congressional Republicans Distort a New Report on the Global Minimum Tax

June 22, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

The notion that we are better off allowing our corporations to pretend their profits are earned in the Cayman Islands or Ireland simply defies logic and the facts. There is no scenario in which the U.S. would be better by ditching the international agreement that the government already negotiated. 

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Trio of GOP Tax Bills Would Expand Corporate Tax Breaks While Doing Little for Americans Who Most Need Help

June 11, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

The trio of tax bills that cleared the House Ways and Means Committee in June include tax cuts that would mostly benefit the richest one percent of Americans and foreign investors.

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Congress Should Raise Taxes on the Rich, But That’s a Totally Separate Issue from the Debt Ceiling

May 9, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

Congress absolutely should raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to generate revenue and improve the fairness of our tax code. President Biden has several proposals to do exactly that. But this is an entirely separate question from whether we should raise the debt ceiling to honor the debts the nation has already incurred and avoid an economic apocalypse.

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Worried About the Debt? Tax the Rich

March 14, 2023 • By Amy Hanauer

As one of the most prosperous countries in human history, we have enough resources for our collective needs. By better taxing corporations and the wealthiest, we can generate revenue to improve family security, strengthen our communities, and reduce the debt too.

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Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Plan

March 10, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

President Biden’s latest budget proposal includes trillions of dollars of new revenue that would be paid by the richest Americans, both directly through increases in personal income, Medicare and estate taxes, and indirectly through increases in corporate income taxes.

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The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act Is Needed More than Ever

February 14, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

The new corporate minimum tax enacted as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act will address some of the worst corporate tax dodging, but what else is needed? A group of Democrats have answered this question with the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act.

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Biden Says the Stock Buyback Tax Should Be Higher. Here are Three Reasons Why He’s Right.

February 13, 2023 • By Joe Hughes

A higher tax on stock buybacks would reduce the tax disparity between dividends and buybacks, raise more revenue for productive public investments, and recoup some of Trump's corporate tax cuts that went to wealthy shareholders.

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Higher Stock Buyback Tax Would Raise Billions by Tightening Loophole for the Wealthy

February 13, 2023 • By Joe Hughes

A higher excise tax rate on buybacks is completely reasonable. Quadrupling the rate, as the President proposes, would raise more revenue and cut into the tax advantage buybacks have over dividends. When a company uses their cash holdings to repurchase their own stock, it is an admission that they have few productive investment opportunities. The public does have productive uses for the tax revenue like infrastructure and schools that create value for the entire economy.

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State of the Union Likely to Continue Progress on Tax Justice

February 7, 2023 • By Amy Hanauer

After decades of Presidents who ran away from taxes, it’s a sea change to have a chief executive who understands that the rich should pay their fair share, extremely profitable corporations should pay their fair share, and the public sector should have revenue to invest in problems – like climate change and healthcare – that will only be solved with pathbreaking public action.

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GAO Report Confirms: Trump Tax Law Cut Corporate Taxes to Rock Bottom

January 13, 2023 • By Steve Wamhoff

A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds the average effective federal income tax rate paid by large, profitable corporations fell to 9 percent in the first year the Trump tax law was in effect, and the share of such companies paying nothing at all rose to 34 percent that year.

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The European Union Moves Forward on Global Minimum Tax. Time for the U.S. to Follow.

December 21, 2022 • By Joe Hughes

The European Union has reached unanimous agreement to implement a global minimum tax beginning in 2024. With the EU and UK fully on board, it's time for Congress to follow suit and implement the plan negotiated by the Biden administration. Doing so would improve the corporate tax system here and around the world while making the United States economy stronger and more competitive.

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The Tax Deal That Wasn’t: Congress Decides Corporate Tax Cuts Are Too Expensive if it Means Also Helping Children

December 20, 2022 • By Joe Hughes

Congressional leaders announced their long-awaited omnibus spending package which will fund the government through September 2023. The good news: the bill does not include needless corporate tax giveaways. The bad news: it also leaves out any expansion of the child tax credit.

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Guide to a Potential Year-End Tax Bill in Congress

December 14, 2022 • By Steve Wamhoff

Any tax legislation enacted before this Congress ends should prioritize policies that have a proven track record of helping workers and children rather than policies that cut taxes for corporations or for individuals who are already well-off. It's not clear right now whether lawmakers will do that - or whether they will enact any tax legislation at all before the year ends, but here we take a look at the key tax issues that lawmakers are discussing.

ITEP’s corporate tax research examines the tax practices of major corporations. Besides its corporate study on average effective tax rates paid by the nation’s largest, most profitable corporations, throughout the year, ITEP produces research on subjects such as offshore cash holdings, tax haven abuse, executive stock options and other tax loopholes. See ITEP’s more recent study of profitable corporations’ tax rates.