There are a few things that have been clear since this tax bill’s inception. It was never a plan to help the middle class. Now, the legislation being considered before the Senate Finance Committee is no longer a tax bill. It is an ACA repeal bill.
News Releases
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news release November 15, 2017 Senate Tax Plan Is a Conflagration That Attempts to Address Ideological Grievances
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news release November 13, 2017 Senate Tax Plan Reserves Greatest Benefit for Richest Americans, Millions Face an Increase
A 50-state analysis of the Senate tax proposal finds that not only would greatest share of benefits go to the richest Americans, but also more than one in 10 taxpayers would face a tax hike, with a large number of those taxpayers residing in states where residents pay higher state and local taxes.
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news release November 9, 2017 Senate Tax Plan Includes Some Changes but Maintains Focus on Tax Cuts for the Rich
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the Senate tax plan released today. While it will take a complete… -
news release November 6, 2017 New Analysis: Wealthy Will Receive a Growing Share of Tax Cuts in House Tax Plan Over Time
A national and 50-state distributional analysis of the House tax plan released late last week reveals that not only would the wealthiest 1 percent receive the greatest share of the total tax cut in year one, but their share would grow over time due to phase-ins of tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich and the eventual elimination or erosion in value of provisions that benefit low- and middle-income taxpayers.
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news release November 5, 2017 Paradise Papers Underscore Why Lawmakers Should Focus on Offshore Tax Avoidance
Following is a statement by Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the release of the “Paradise Papers,” a series of documents from Appleby, a leading offshore law firm. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the investigative report today.
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news release November 2, 2017 Bottom-Line Conclusion about GOP Tax Plan Is the Same After Reviewing More Details
Instead of engaging in thorough, public process that may have yielded real tax reform for middle-class families, lawmakers covertly put together a plan that reserves its biggest benefits for corporations and the wealthy while throwing in a few gimmicks for political cover.
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news release November 1, 2017 Even if Top Marginal Tax Rate Remains 39.6%, GOP Tax Plan Will Still Largely Benefit the Wealthy
Keeping the top tax rate at 39.6 percent for millionaires is a cosmetic change meant to make this tax plan more palatable. Unless tax writers take out other provisions that almost exclusively benefit the highest-income households, millionaires will still benefit most.
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news release October 26, 2017 States with Highest Income Tax Rates Economically Outperform States with No Income Tax
A comparative analysis of economic trends in the nine states that do not levy an income tax and the nine states that levy the highest top income tax rates found… -
news release October 5, 2017 ITEP Statement on House Budget Resolution: Lawmakers Gear up to Give the Public What It Doesn’t Want
Passing a budget is supposed to provide a structure for our elected officials to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and public investments. But that is not the purpose of this budget resolution.
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news release October 4, 2017 50-State Analysis: GOP-Trump Tax Proposal Would Give the Store Away to the Wealthy, Exacerbate the Income Divide
A 50-state analysis of the GOP tax framework reveals the top 1 percent of taxpayers would receive a substantial tax cut while middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers in many states would… -
news release September 27, 2017 ITEP ED on GOP Tax Plan: “There is Something Terribly Wrong with This Picture”
Economically, the rich are doing just fine, yet the GOP is brazenly selling old hat trickle-down economic theories laden with rhetoric about projected economic growth that will benefit working people. Worse, they are doing so even though opinion polling shows the majority of Americans do not want Congress to pass tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
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news release September 13, 2017 New Analysis Shows White House Tax Proposal Would be an Unprecedented Upward Redistribution of Wealth
The tax plan outlined by President Trump would strip away the U.S. tax system’s moderate progressivity by lowering the effective tax rate for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by… -
news release August 30, 2017 ITEP on President Trump’s Missouri Visit: The Policy Doesn’t Match the Rhetoric
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding President Trump’s visit to Springfield, Mo. The president is expected to tout… -
news release July 27, 2017 GOP Will Have to Radically Depart from Previous Proposals to Meet Its Tax Reform Goals
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding GOP leadership’s tax reform goals released today. The tax reform goals outlined… -
news release July 20, 2017 50-State Analysis of Trump’s Tax Outline: Poorer Taxpayers and Poorer States are Disadvantaged
Not only would President Trump’s proposed tax plan fail to deliver on its promise of largely helping middle-class taxpayers, it also would shower a disproportionate share of the total tax… -
news release July 13, 2017 Regardless of Political Maneuvers, Tax Cuts for the Rich Remain Tied to Cuts in Health Care
The GOP continues its dogged attempt to unravel the Affordable Care Act under the guise of ‘fixing’ our health system despite multiple Congressional Budget Office reports indicating millions stand to lose health care coverage. It’s is not obvious that this version of the bill is much different from the previous fiasco of a bill in which CBO projected 22 million would lose coverage.
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news release June 20, 2017 Speaker Ryan’s “Bold Agenda” for the Country Boils Down to Tax Breaks for the Wealthy
Speaker Paul Ryan today correctly outlined some of working people’s concerns, including the desire for more good jobs and access to the training required to secure those jobs. But his bottom line policy prescriptions for addressing the concerns of working people are the same old trickle-down economic policies that time after time have proven to primarily benefit the wealthy.
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news release May 23, 2017 Trump’s Budget Proposal and Tax Plan Are the Antithesis of Populism
A month ago, President Trump released a tax sketch that likely would redistribute wealth upward, and today he has poured salt on the wound with a proposed budget that would gut safety net programs and cut funding for other services that help move people out of poverty. Yet the PR refrain is the same Orwellian prattle we’ve been hearing for years: water isn’t wet, tax cuts for the rich will eventually trickle down to the rest of us, and balancing the federal budget must always rely on cutting programs that benefit ordinary people.
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news release May 18, 2017 Corporate Lobbyists Should Not Shape the Nation’s Tax Reform Debate
If the lineup for today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on tax reform is an indication of how the tax policy debate will unfold in the coming months, businesses and their lobbyists will have outsize influence in the process. This is a mistake.
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news release May 17, 2017 Report: Private School Voucher Proposal Creates Tax Shelter for Wealthy; Would Starve Public Schools of Critical Funds
A new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, details how tax subsidies that funnel money toward private schools are being… -
news release April 27, 2017 Profitable Fortune 500 Companies Avoid $126 Billion in State Corporate Taxes Over Eight Years
The Effective State Tax Rate Paid by Profitable Fortune 500 Corporations Is Declining,Yet States Continue to Actively Dismantle Their Corporate Income Taxes (Washington, D.C.) As states struggle with tough budget… -
news release April 26, 2017 Trump Tax Plan Revives Economic Voodoo
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the tax plan released today by the Trump Administration. The administration has… -
news release April 24, 2017 New Report: DACA-Eligible Immigrants Annually Pay $2 billion in State and Local Taxes
Young undocumented immigrants’ tax contributions would drop by nearly half if DACA protections were rescinded A new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report examined the state and local tax… -
news release April 23, 2017 New Analysis: Average Alaskan Would Pay Less Under Income Tax Than Under Other Fiscal Options
Cutting the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) or Implementing a Sales Tax Would Be Costlier than Income Tax for Most Alaskans A new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic… -
news release April 13, 2017 Resources for Tax Day 2017
Federal and state taxes are a contentious point of policy debate all year round but are especially salient in the minds of most Americans as Tax Day approaches. This year,…