Chart comparing House GOP Tax Plan, Trump’s Initial Tax Proposal and Trump’s Revised Tax Proposal.
Publications
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report November 15, 2016 Fact Sheet: Comparison of House GOP Tax Plan, Trump’s Initial Tax Proposal and Trump’s Revised Tax Proposal
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report October 28, 2016 The Short and Sweet on Taxing Soda
The concept of taxing sodas and other sugary beverages has gained traction recently across the United States and around the world. The World Health Organization officially recommended a tax on sugar sweetened beverages as a way to battle the obesity epidemic. In the US, multiple states and localities have looked to taxes on sugar sweetened beverages as a way to improve public health and increase revenue. In 2014, Berkeley, California became the first U.S. locality to enact such a tax. In 2016, similar taxes were enacted in Boulder, Colorado; Albany, Oakland, and San Francisco, California; Cook County, Illinois; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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brief October 18, 2016 Cigarette Taxes: Issues and Options
Efforts to increase taxes usually face some opposition, particularly increases to broad-based taxes such as the sales or income tax. Yet in many states, lawmakers have been able to agree on one approach to revenue-raising: the cigarette tax. Since 2002, nearly every state has enacted a cigarette tax in-crease to fund health care, discourage smoking, or to help balance state budgets. This policy brief looks at the advantages and disadvantages of cigarette taxes, and cigarette tax increases, as a source of state and local revenue.
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report October 12, 2016 State Tax Subsidies for Private K-12 Education
This report explains the workings, and problems, with state-level tax subsidies for private K-12 education. It also discusses how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has exacerbated some of these problems by allowing taxpayers to claim federal charitable deductions even on private school contributions that were not truly charitable in nature. Finally, an appendix to this report provides additional detail on the specific K-12 private school tax subsidies made available by each state.
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report October 4, 2016 Offshore Shell Games 2016
This study explores how in 2015 Fortune 500 companies used tax haven subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes on much of their income. It reveals that tax haven use is now standard practice among the Fortune 500 and that a handful of the country’s wealthiest corporations benefit the most from this tax avoidance scheme.
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report September 30, 2016 Comment Letter to FASB on Income Tax Disclosure
We appreciate the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) ongoing review of its accounting standards to ensure that financial statements are “facilitating clear communication of information that is important to financial statement users.” Overall, the changes to disclosure requirements proposed by FASB in the exposure draft would represent a significant step forward toward providing users of financial statements the clarity that they need. We believe, however, that the exposure draft does not go far enough in providing the clarity needed and sought by investors and the public alike.
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report September 15, 2016 State Tax Codes as Poverty Fighting Tools
Despite this unlevel playing field states create for their poorest residents through existing policies, many state policymakers have proposed (and in some cases enacted) tax increases on the poor under the guise of “tax reform,” often to finance tax cuts for their wealthiest residents and profitable corporations.
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brief September 14, 2016 Property Tax Circuit Breakers
State lawmakers seeking to make residential property taxes more affordable have two broad options: across-the-board tax cuts for taxpayers at all income levels, such as a homestead exemption or a tax cap, and targeted tax breaks that are given only to particular groups of low- and middle-income taxpayers. One such targeted program to reduce property taxes is called a “circuit breaker” because it protects taxpayers from a property tax “overload” just like an electric circuit breaker: when a property tax bill exceeds a certain percentage of a taxpayer’s income, the circuit breaker reduces property taxes in excess of this “overload” level. This policy brief surveys the advantages and disadvantages of the circuit breaker approach to reducing property taxes.
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brief September 14, 2016 Reducing the Cost of Child Care Through State Tax Codes
Low- and middle-income working parents spend a significant portion of their income on child care. As the number of parents working outside of the home continues to rise, child care expenses have become an unavoidable and increasingly unaffordable expense. This policy brief examines state tax policy tools that can be used to make child care more affordable: a dependent care tax credit modeled after the federal program and a deduction for child care expenses.
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brief September 14, 2016 Rewarding Work Through State Earned Income Tax Credits
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a policy designed to bolster the earnings of low-wage workers and offset some of the taxes they pay, providing the opportunity for struggling families to step up and out of poverty toward meaningful economic security. The federal EITC has kept millions of Americans out of poverty since its enactment in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, the effectiveness of the EITC has been magnified as many states have enacted and later expanded their own credits.
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brief September 14, 2016 Options for a Less Regressive Sales Tax
Sales taxes are one of the most important revenue sources for state and local governments; however, they are also among the most unfair taxes, falling more heavily on low- and middle-income households. Therefore, it is important that policymakers nationwide find ways to make sales taxes more equitable while preserving this important source of funding for public services. This policy brief discusses two approaches to a less regressive sales tax: broad-based exemptions and targeted sales tax credits.
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brief August 22, 2016 How State Tax Changes Affect Your Federal Taxes: A Primer on the “Federal Offset”
Read this brief in PDF here. State lawmakers frequently make claims about how proposed tax changes would affect taxpayers at different income levels. Yet too many lawmakers routinely ignore one… -
brief August 22, 2016 Indexing Income Taxes for Inflation: Why It Matters
Read brief in PDF here. All of us experience the effects of inflation as the price of the goods and services we buy gradually goes up over time. Fortunately, as… -
brief August 17, 2016 The Folly of State Capital Gains Tax Cuts
Read the brief in a PDF here. The federal tax system treats income from capital gains more favorably than income from work. A number of state tax systems do as… -
report August 8, 2016 Achieving Sustainable Infrastructure Revenue with Gas Tax Reform
This brief outlines the causes of Louisiana’s infrastructure revenue shortfall and offers recommendations for how the state can achieve “sufficient increased levels of recurring funding to address the transportation backlog in highway and bridge maintenance needs in Louisiana,” as per the Task Force’s mandate.
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brief July 27, 2016 Why Sales Taxes Should Apply to Services
Read this Policy Brief in PDF here. General sales taxes are an important revenue source for state governments, accounting for close to one-third of state tax collections nationwide. But most… -
report July 12, 2016 Income Tax Offers Alaska a Brighter Fiscal Future
Read this report in PDF. This month, Alaska legislators regroup in yet another special session where they will consider legislation to address a yawning budget gap created by declining oil… -
brief July 11, 2016 Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
This brief was updated July 2018 Read this Policy Brief in PDF here. Sales taxes are an important revenue source, composing close to half of all state tax revenues.[1] But… -
report June 29, 2016 Ryan Tax Plan Reserves Most Tax Cuts for Top 1 percent, Costs $4 Trillion Over 10 Years
A new distributional analysis of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” policies finds that the plan would: • Add $4 trillion to the national debt over a… -
brief June 29, 2016 State Corporate Tax Disclosure: Why It’s Needed
Few state tax trends are as striking as the rapid decline of state corporate income tax revenues. As recently as 1986, state corporate income taxes equaled 0.5 percent of nationwide Gross State Product (GSP) (a measure of statewide economic activity). But in fiscal year 2013 (the last year for which data are available), state and local corporate income taxes were just 0.33 percent of nationwide GSP–representing a decline of over 30 percent.
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report June 28, 2016 How Long Has it Been Since Your State Raised Its Gas Tax?
An updated version of this report has been published with data through July 1, 2017. Read this Policy Brief in PDF form Many states’ transportation budgets are in disarray, in… -
brief June 2, 2016 State Treatment of Itemized Deductions
Read this Policy Brief in PDF Form Map of State Treatment of Itemized Deductions Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia allow a group of income tax breaks known as… -
report April 13, 2016 Distributional Analyses of Revenue Options for Alaska
Alaskans are faced with a stark fiscal reality. Following the discovery of oil in the 1960s and 1970s, state lawmakers repealed their personal income tax and began funding government primarily through oil tax and royalty revenues. For decades, oil revenues filled roughly 90 percent of the state’s general fund.
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report March 22, 2016 Higher Education Income Tax Deductions and Credits in the States
Read full report in PDF Download detailed appendix with state-by-state information on deductions and credits (Excel) Every state levying a personal income tax offers at least one deduction or credit… -
report February 24, 2016 Undocumented Immigrants’ State & Local Tax Contributions (2016)
This report was updated in March 2017 Read as a PDF. (Includes Full Appendix of State-by-State Data) Report Landing Page Public debates over federal immigration reform often suffer from insufficient…