Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s proposal An Economic Agenda for American Families: Empowering Working and Middle Class Americans to Thrive would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as modeled by the Working Families Tax Relief Act.
Federal Policy
ITEP’s federal policy resources provide quantitative and qualitative research and analysis on current tax policies, proposals and reform options. Its distributional analyses highlight how tax proposals will affect low-income, middle-class and wealthy Americans nationally and in all 50 states.
ITEP's Federal Policy Research Priorities
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report December 19, 2019 Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s Proposed EITC Expansion
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blog December 16, 2019 More of the Same: Corporate Tax Avoidance Hasn’t Changed Much Under Trump-GOP Tax Law
A new report from ITEP released today shows that, based on the first year of financial reports released by companies operating under the new tax law, tax avoidance appears to be every bit as much of a problem under the new tax system as it was before the Trump tax law took effect.
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report December 16, 2019 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Year of the Trump Tax Law
Profitable Fortune 500 companies avoided $73.9 billion in taxes under the first year of the Trump-GOP tax law. The study includes financial filings by 379 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable in 2018; it excludes companies that reported a loss.
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brief December 12, 2019 Opportunity Zones Bolster Investors’ Bottom Lines Rather than Economic or Racial Equity
This policy brief provides an overview of how opportunity zones are designed and highlights some of the flaws of the policy, including the detrimental impact opportunity zones have on communities of color.
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report December 12, 2019 States Should Decouple from Costly Federal Opportunity Zones and Reject Look-Alike Programs
Post enactment of TCJA, lawmakers in most states needed to decide how to respond to the creation of this new program. Given the shortcomings of the federal Opportunity Zones program and its added potential costs to states, the most prudent course of action is three-pronged: States should move quickly to decouple; states should reject look-alike programs; and lawmakers should make investments directly into economically distressed areas.
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report December 9, 2019 Cannabis Legalization: Tax Cut or Tax Hike?
Understanding the full tax consequences of cannabis legalization requires evaluating not only the excise taxes proposed in most legalization bills, but also the effects on the federal income tax liability of cannabis businesses.
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December 2, 2019 Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act
Data available for download The Worker Relief and Credit Reform (WRCR) Act would replace the existing EITC. In most cases, the WRCR credit would be $4,000 for single people and… -
blog October 30, 2019 There’s a lot more to Corporate Tax Reform than Tax Rates
Several Democratic candidates have proposed raising the statutory corporate tax rate from its current level of 21 percent to fund their spending proposals. Political reporters and observers may read a great deal into the different corporate rates proposed by candidates, but the truth is that rates mean very little on their own.
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report October 28, 2019 Benefits of a Financial Transaction Tax
A financial transaction tax (FTT) has the potential to curb inequality, reduce market inefficiencies, and raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. Presidential candidates have proposed using an FTT to fund expanding Medicare, education, child care, and investments in children’s health. Any of these public investments would be progressive, narrowing resource gaps between the most vulnerable families and the most fortunate.
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blog October 15, 2019 Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s New Book Reminds Us that Tax Injustice Is a Choice
Cue Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. In their new book, The Triumph of Injustice, the economists, who already jolted the world with their shocking data on exploding income inequality and wealth inequality, tell us to stop acting like we are paralyzed when it comes to tax policy. There are answers and solutions. And in about 200 surprisingly readable pages, they provide them.
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blog October 2, 2019 How a Federal Wealth Tax Can Help the Economy
A New York Times article explained that proponents of a federal wealth tax hope to address exploding inequality but then went on to list the fears of billionaires and economic policymakers, finding that “the idea of redistributing wealth by targeting billionaires is stirring fierce debates at the highest ranks of academia and business, with opponents arguing it would cripple economic growth, sap the motivation of entrepreneurs who aspire to be multimillionaires and set off a search for loopholes.” A wealth tax will not damage our economy and instead would likely improve it. Here’s why.
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blog September 26, 2019 A Well-Designed Carbon Tax Could Curb Emissions, Offset Costs for Many Families
A well-designed carbon tax package—that is, levied at a sufficiently high rate and paired with equitable offsets for lower- and middle-income families—could improve both our environment and the fairness of our tax system.
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blog September 19, 2019 Capital Gains Tax Breaks Are Finally on the Defensive
One of the most glaring sources of unfairness in the federal tax code are rules that tax capital gains, which mostly go to the rich, less than wages and other types of income that most of us depend on. The capital gains tax breaks have for decades been comfortably ensconced behind trenches filled with special interests who would defend them until the end. But the end is now conceivable.
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blog September 17, 2019 Julián Castro Provides the Latest Proposal to Expand Refundable Tax Credits
New estimates from ITEP show that Julián Castro’s refundable tax credit proposal would mostly benefit the bottom 60 percent of households and would have a cost ($195 billion in 2020) that places it roughly in the middle of the different tax credit proposals that Democrats have offered over the past several months.
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blog September 16, 2019 The Case for a Federal Wealth Tax
A federal wealth tax on the richest 0.1 percent of Americans is a viable approach for Congress to raise revenue and address economic inequality. This new video from ITEP makes the case for a federal wealth tax.
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blog September 12, 2019 Why Are Ideologues Trying to Downplay Poverty and Economic Inequality?
Our elected officials should pause and check the pulse of the nation. The public is aware of the great income divide and likely isn’t keen on an agenda that would use sleight of hand to “reduce” poverty and spend less on domestic programs—particularly when that agenda is in tandem with using the tax code to further boost income for the wealthy.
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blog September 12, 2019 Sen. Wyden’s Anti-Deferral Accounting Proposal Could Be a Game-Changer
Today, Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, fulfilled a promise he made several months ago to release a proposal that could fundamentally transform how the… -
blog September 10, 2019 Census Numbers Show the Power of the Tax Code to Direct Resources to Low-Income Families
Refundable federal tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), lifted 7.9 million people out of poverty in 2018. This latest analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates the power of federal programs to alleviate poverty and help low-income families keep up with the increasing cost of living.
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blog September 10, 2019 How Tax Policy Can Help Mitigate Poverty, Address Income Inequality
Analysts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have produced multiple recent briefs and reports that provide insight on how current and proposed tax policies affect family economic security and income inequality.
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report September 10, 2019 Major Federal Tax Credit Proposals
In 2019, several federal lawmakers have introduced tax credit proposals to significantly expand existing tax credits or create new ones to benefit low- and moderate-income people. While these proposals vary a great deal and take different approaches, all build off the success of the EITC and CTC and target their benefits to families in the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution who have an annual household income of $70,000 or less.
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blog August 28, 2019 Updated Estimates from ITEP: Trump Tax Law Still Benefits the Rich No Matter How You Look at It
President Trump’s allies in Congress continue to defend their 2017 tax law in misleading ways. Just last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee stated that most “of the tax overhaul went into the pockets of working families and Main Street businesses who need it most, not Wall Street.” ITEP’s most recent analysis estimates that in 2020 the richest 5 percent of taxpayers will receive $145 billion in tax cuts, or half the law’s benefits to U.S. taxpayers.
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report August 28, 2019 TCJA by the Numbers, 2020
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law by President Trump at the end of 2017, includes provisions that dramatically cut taxes and provisions that offset a fraction of the revenue loss by eliminating or limiting certain tax breaks. This page includes estimates of TCJA’s impacts in 2020.
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blog August 20, 2019 White House Considers Payroll Tax Cut that GOP Opposed During Obama Years
The Trump Administration is considering cutting the Social Security payroll tax to prevent an economic downturn, something that seemed more justified when enacted in the aftermath of the Great Recession—when congressional Republicans largely opposed it. Here are some things to remember about this tax.
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blog August 20, 2019 Business Roundtable’s Newfound Devotion to Corporate Responsibility Doesn’t Include Paying Taxes
If you squint really hard, the Business Roundtable’s newly declared fondness for “supporting the communities in which we work” could be read as an acknowledgment of the need for a tax system that can pay for needed services. But it’s not.