Local taxes are key to thriving communities. One in seven tax dollars in the U.S.—about $886 billion annually—is levied by local governments in support of education, infrastructure, public health, and other priorities. Three fourths of this funding comes from property taxes, 18 percent comes from sales and excise taxes, and six percent comes from income taxes.
Publications
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brief December 5, 2024 How Local Governments Raise Revenue — and What it Means for Tax Equity
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report October 23, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Kamala Harris’ Tax Plan
The tax proposals from Vice President Kamala Harris would, on average, lead to a tax increase for the richest 1 percent of Americans and a tax cut for all other income groups.
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report October 7, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.
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report September 13, 2024 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: Updated National and State-by-State Estimates
The TCJA Permanency Act would make permanent the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that are set to expire at the end of 2025. The legislation… -
brief September 12, 2024 State Earned Income Tax Credits Support Families and Workers in 2024
Nearly two-thirds of states (31 plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) have an Earned Income Tax Credit. These credits boost low-paid workers’ incomes and offset some of the taxes they pay, helping lower-income families achieve greater economic security.
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brief September 12, 2024 State Child Tax Credits Boosted Financial Security for Families and Children in 2024
Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia provide Child Tax Credits to reduce poverty, boost economic security, and invest in children. This year alone, lawmakers in three states – Colorado, New York, and Utah – expanded their Child Tax Credits while lawmakers in the District of Columbia created a new credit that will take effect in 2025.
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brief August 6, 2024 Sales Tax Holidays Miss the Mark When it Comes to Effective Sales Tax Reform
Nineteen states have sales tax holidays on the books in 2024. These suspensions combined will cost states and localities over $1.3 billion in lost revenue this year. Sales tax holidays are poorly targeted and too temporary to meaningfully change the regressive nature of a state’s tax system.
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report July 30, 2024 Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants
Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase.
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report July 17, 2024 Improving Refundable Tax Credits by Making Them Immigrant-Inclusive
Undocumented immigrants who work and pay taxes but don’t have a valid Social Security number for either themselves or their children are excluded from federal EITC and CTC benefits. Fortunately, several states have stepped in to ensure undocumented immigrants are not left behind by the gaps in the federal EITC and CTC. State lawmakers should continue to ensure that immigrants who are otherwise eligible for these tax credits receive them.
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report July 16, 2024 Corporate Tax Breaks Contribute to Income and Racial Inequality and Shift Resources to Foreign Investors
Corporate tax cuts and corporate tax avoidance worsen income and racial inequality in our country. Most of the benefits flow to foreign investors and the richest 20% of Americans.
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report June 27, 2024 Who Benefits and Who Pays: How Corporate Tax Breaks Drive Inequality
Corporate tax breaks and corporate tax avoidance significantly contribute to income and racial inequality and largely benefit foreign investors.
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report June 26, 2024 States Should Enact, Expand Mansion Taxes to Advance Fairness and Shared Prosperity
The report was produced in partnership with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and co-authored by CBPP’s Deputy Director of State Policy Research Samantha Waxman.[1] Click here to use… -
report May 2, 2024 Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018.
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brief April 16, 2024 Is California Really a High-Tax State?
Key Findings For families of modest means, California is not a high-tax state. California taxes are close to the national average for families in the bottom 80 percent of the… -
report April 11, 2024 Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
State and local tax codes can do a lot to reduce inequality. But they add to the nation’s growing income inequality problem when they capture a greater share of income from low- or moderate-income taxpayers. These regressive tax codes also result in higher tax rates on communities of color, further worsening racial income and wealth divides.
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report April 9, 2024 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2024
America’s tax system is just barely progressive, and not nearly as progressive as many suggest or as progressive as it could be. There is plenty of room for lawmakers to improve the progressivity of the tax code to combat economic, wealth, and racial inequality.
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brief March 14, 2024 Local Mansion Taxes: Building Stronger Communities with Progressive Taxes on High-Value Real Estate
More than one dozen cities and counties levy progressive taxes on high-price real estate transactions — sometimes called mansion taxes — and over a dozen more are considering such policies. By asking buyers and sellers with greater financial means to contribute more to the common good, these policies are equipping communities with resources to make progress on critical challenges of local and national concern.
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report March 12, 2024 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan
President Biden’s most recent budget plan includes proposals that would raise more than $5 trillion from high-income individuals and corporations over a decade. Like the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, it would partly reverse the Trump tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals, clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, and require the wealthiest individuals to pay taxes on their capital gains income just as they are required to for other types of income, among other reforms.
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report February 29, 2024 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.
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report February 6, 2024 Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality
Historic and ongoing discrimination have created stark racial disparities in the US, and the racial retirement wealth gap is one such example.
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brief February 2, 2024 House SALT Proposal is Expensive, Unneeded, and Poorly Designed
The SALT Marriage Penalty Elimination Act passed by the House Rules Committee on February 1 is costly, decreasing tax revenue by about $8 billion in 2023.
It also mostly only helps taxpayers who are already well off. -
brief February 2, 2024 Impacts of the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act
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… -
report January 17, 2024 Ongoing Use of Offshore Tax Havens Demonstrates the Need for the Global Minimum Tax
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.… -
brief January 16, 2024 Proposed Tax Deal Would Help Millions of Kids with Child Tax Credit Expansion While Extending Damaging Corporate Tax Breaks
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-… -
report December 7, 2023 The Estate Tax is Irrelevant to More Than 99 Percent of Americans
The federal estate tax has reached historic lows. In 2019, only 8 of every 10,000 people who died left an estate large enough to trigger the tax. Legislative changes under presidents of both parties have increased the basic exemption from the estate tax over the past 20 years. This has cut the share of adults leaving behind taxable estates down from more than 2 percent to well under 1 percent.