Circuit breaker credits are the most effective tool available to promote property tax affordability. These policies prevent a property tax “overload” by crediting back property taxes that go beyond a certain share of income. Circuit breakers intervene to ensure that property taxes do not swallow up an unreasonable portion of qualifying households’ budgets.
Reports
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report May 11, 2023 Preventing an Overload: How Property Tax Circuit Breakers Promote Housing Affordability
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report May 4, 2023 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: National and State-by-State Estimates
The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.
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report March 23, 2023 State Income Tax Subsidies for Seniors
State governments provide a wide array of tax subsidies to their older residents. But too many of these carveouts focus on predominately wealthy and white seniors, all while the cost climbs.
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report March 16, 2023 Effects of President Biden’s Proposal to Expand the Child Tax Credit
In his latest budget proposal, President Biden proposes enhancing the Child Tax Credit (CTC) based on the temporary credit that was in effect for 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. In this report we analyze how that proposal would help children and families.
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report March 10, 2023 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Plan
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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report November 16, 2022 State Child Tax Credits and Child Poverty: A 50-State Analysis
Regardless of future Child Tax Credit developments at the federal level, state policies can supplement the federal credit to deliver additional benefits to children and families. State credits can be specifically tailored to meet the needs of local populations while also producing long-term benefits for society as a whole
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report October 13, 2022 The Geographic Distribution of Extreme Wealth in the U.S.
More than one in four dollars of wealth in the U.S. is held by a tiny fraction of households with net worth over $30 million. Nationally, we estimate that wealth over $30 million per household will reach $26 trillion in 2022 with roughly one-fifth of that amount ($4.5 trillion) held by billionaires.
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report October 4, 2022 Unfinished Tax Reform: Corporate Minimum Taxes
While the Inflation Reduction Act’s corporate minimum tax is a huge improvement in our tax system, implementing the global corporate minimum tax would improve it much more. And if other governments implement the global minimum tax, the United States will have an even stronger interest in joining them to ensure that new revenue collected from American corporations flows to the U.S. rather than to other countries.
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report September 7, 2022 National and State-by-State Estimates of Two Approaches to Expanding the Child Tax Credit
The Romney Child Tax Credit plan would leave a quarter of children worse off compared to current law and help half as many low-income children as the 2021 expansion of the credit.
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report June 21, 2022 Creating Racially and Economically Equitable Tax Policy in the South
The South’s negative outcomes on measures of wellbeing are the result of a century and a half of policy choices. Lawmakers have many options available to make concrete improvements to tax policy that would raise more revenue, do so equitably, and generate resources that could improve schools, healthcare, social services, infrastructure, and other public resources.
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report June 15, 2022 State-by-State Tax Expenditure Reports
Below is a list of tax expenditure reports published in the states: Alabama Report on Alabama Tax Expenditures Report on Alabama Tax Expenditures (2021 and earlier) Alaska Revenue Sources Book… -
report April 26, 2022 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Plan
President Biden’s latest budget plan includes proposals that would raise $2.5 trillion in new revenue. While many of these reforms appeared in his previous budget, some of them are brand new, such as his proposal to prevent basis-shifting in partnerships and his Billionaires Minimum Income Tax.
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report March 25, 2022 What the Biden Administration Can Do on Its Own, Without Congress, to Fix the Tax Code
The Biden administration has several options to address tax reform even when Congress is unable or unwilling to help.
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report March 7, 2022 State-by-State Estimates of Sen. Rick Scott’s “Skin in the Game” Proposal
A proposal from Sen. Rick Scott would increase taxes for more than 35% of Americans, with the poorest fifth of Americans paying 34% of the tax increase.
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report February 8, 2022 Federal EITC Enhancements Help More Than One in Three Young Workers
More than one in three young adults would benefit from workers without children being eligible to receive the federal EITC. This policy change would bolster young adults’ economic security.
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report January 25, 2022 Revenue-Raising Proposals in the Evolving Build Back Better Debate
The United States needs to raise more tax revenue to fund investments in the American people. This revenue can be obtained with reforms that would require the richest and wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share to support the society that makes their fortunes possible.
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report November 18, 2021 Analysis of the House of Representatives’ Build Back Better Legislation
If the bill becomes law, in 2022 federal taxes would go up for the average taxpayer among the richest one percent and down for the average taxpayer in other income groups.
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report November 4, 2021 The Impact of Work From Home on Commercial Property Values and the Property Tax in U.S. Cities
The fiscal implications of a decline in commercial property values are important because the property tax is the dominant local source of taxes, and commercial property makes up a significant portion of the property base in cities.
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report October 4, 2021 State Income Taxes and Racial Equity: Narrowing Racial Income and Wealth Gaps with State Personal Income Taxes
10 state personal income tax reforms that offer the most promising routes toward narrowing racial income and wealth gaps through the tax code.
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report September 23, 2021 Repealing the SALT Cap Would Wipe Out Revenue Raised by the House Ways and Means Bill’s Income Tax Provisions
There are several ways that the House leadership could avoid this problem. One approach is for lawmakers to replace the SALT cap with a different kind of limit on tax breaks for the rich that actually raises revenue and avoids disfavoring some states compared to others as the SALT cap does. ITEP has suggested a way to do this.
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report September 21, 2021 Tax Changes in the House Ways and Means Committee Build Back Better Bill
This report finds that the vast majority of these tax increases would be paid by the richest 1 percent of Americans and foreign investors. The bill’s most significant tax cuts — expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — would more than offset the tax increases for the average taxpayer in all income groups except for the richest 5 percent.
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report September 17, 2021 Why Congress Should Reform the Federal Corporate Income Tax
It is reasonable for corporations (and, indirectly, their shareholders) to pay taxes to support the government investments that make their profits possible, such as the highways that facilitate the movement of goods and people, the education and health care systems that provide a productive workforce, the legal system and the protection of property, all of which are vital to commerce. Corporate tax avoidance allows wealthy and powerful individuals to reap enormous benefits from these investments without contributing their fair share to support them.
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report August 26, 2021 Options to Reduce the Revenue Loss from Adjusting the SALT Cap
If lawmakers are unwilling to replace the SALT cap with a new limit on tax breaks that raises revenue, then any modification they make to the cap in the current environment will lose revenue and make the federal tax code less progressive. Given this, lawmakers should choose a policy option that loses as little revenue as possible and that does the smallest amount of damage possible to the progressivity of the federal tax code.
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report July 29, 2021 Corporate Tax Avoidance Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Thirty-nine profitable corporations in the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax from 2018 through 2020, the first three years that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was in effect. Besides the 39 companies that paid nothing over three years, an additional 73 profitable corporations paid less than half the statutory corporate income tax rate of 21 percent established under TCJA. As a group, these 73 corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 5.3 percent during these three years.
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report April 20, 2021 Not Worth Its SALT: Tax Cut Proposal Overwhelmingly Benefits Wealthy, White Households
A previous ITEP analysis showed the lopsided distribution of SALT cap repeal by income level. The vast majority of families would not benefit financially from repeal and most of the tax cuts would flow to families with incomes above $200,000.
This report builds on that work by using a mix of tax return and survey data within our microsimulation tax model to estimate the distribution of SALT cap repeal across race and ethnicity. It shows that repealing the SALT cap would be the latest in a long string of inequitable policies that have conspired to create the vast racial income and wealth gaps that exist today.