Reports
429 posts
Low Tax for Whom?: Florida is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
• By Meg Wiehe
Annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau appear to lend support to Florida's reputation as a "low tax state," ranking it 48th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state's overall tax revenues has led many observers to overlook the fact that different taxpayers experience Florida's tax system very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of Florida residents pay significantly more of their income (12.9 percent) in…
Low Tax for Whom?: Texas is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
• By Meg Wiehe
Annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau appear to lend support to Texas' reputation as a "low tax state," ranking it 39th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state's overall tax revenues has led many observers to overlook the fact that different taxpayers experience Texas' tax system very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of Texans pay significantly more of their income (12.5 percent) in state…
Low Tax for Whom?: Arizona is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
• By Meg Wiehe
Annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau appears to lend support to Arizona's reputation as a "low tax state," ranking it 37th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state's overall tax revenues has led many observers to overlook the fact that different taxpayers experience Arizona's tax system very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of Arizona residents pay significantly more of their income (12.5 percent) in…
Testimony: Adding Sustainability to the Highway Trust Fund
• By Carl Davis
The federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is the single most important mechanism for funding maintenance and improvements to the nation's transportation infrastructure. Absent Congressional action, however, the HTF will face insolvency at the end of July. Unfortunately, despite the critical importance of infrastructure to the U.S. economy, the condition of the HTF has been allowed to deteriorate to the point that imminent insolvency has become entirely normal.
Issues with Taxing Marijuana at the State Level
• By Carl Davis, Richard Phillips
Read as a PDF. Table of Contents Introduction Why Tax Marijuana? Designing a State Tax on Marijuana How Much Revenue Would Marijuana Legalization Generate for States Factors that Could Negatively Impact Marijuana Revenue Factors that Could Positively Impact Marijuana Revenue Conclusion Endnotes Charts and Text Boxes Current Approaches to Taxing Retail Marijuana Sales How Should […]
Undocumented Immigrants’ State & Local Tax Contributions (2015)
• By Matthew Gardner, Meg Wiehe
This report was updated February 2016 Read as a PDF. (Includes Full Appendix of State-by-State Data) Report Landing Page In the public debates over federal immigration reform, sufficient and accurate information about the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants is often lacking. The reality is the 11.4 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States pay billions […]
Most Americans Live in States with Variable-Rate Gas Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
The federal government and many states are seeing shortfalls in their transportation budgets in part because the gasoline taxes they use to generate those funds are poorly designed. Thirty-one states and the federal government levy "fixed-rate" gas taxes where the tax rate does not change even as the cost of infrastructure materials inevitably increases over time. The federal government's 18.4 cent gas tax, for example, has not increased in over 22 years. And twenty states…
How Long Has it Been Since Your State Raised Its Gas Tax?
• By Carl Davis
An updated version of this report has been published with data through July 1, 2017. Read the report in PDF form. Many states’ transportation budgets are in disarray, in part because they are trying to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with a gasoline tax rate that is rarely increased.1 […]
Grocery Tax Exemption Is No Improvement for Idaho
• By Carl Davis
Read as a PDF. A proposal to eliminate Idaho’s Grocery Credit Refund and create a sales tax exemption for all grocery purchases would reduce state revenues by roughly $34 million each year while primarily benefiting higher-income taxpayers, tourists and other non-residents. Low-income families would save very little, and some could actually see a tax increase. […]
Who Pays? (Fourth Edition)
• By Carl Davis, Matthew Gardner, Meg Wiehe
Major tax overhauls are on the agenda in a record number of states, and “Who Pays?” documents in state-by-state detail the precise distribution of state income taxes, sales and excise taxes and property taxes paid by each income group as of January 2013. It is a critical baseline against which future proposals can be measured. […]
Who Pays? Fifth Edition
• By ITEP Staff
Read the Report in PDF The 2015 Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States (the fifth edition of the report) assesses the fairness of state and local tax systems by measuring the state and local taxes that will be paid in 2015 by different income groups as a share […]
State Tax Codes As Poverty Fighting Tools
• By Meg Wiehe
Read the Report in PDF Form The Census Bureau released data in September showing that the share of Americans living in poverty remains high. In 2013, the national poverty rate was 14.5 percent, a slight drop from last years’ rate of 15 percent and the first decline since 2006.1 However, the poverty rate remains 2.0 […]
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
• By Meg Wiehe
Sales taxes are an important revenue source, comprising close to half of all state revenues in 2013. But sales taxes are also inherently regressive because the lower a family's income, the more of its income the family must spend on things subject to the tax.
State Estate and Inheritance Taxes
• By Meg Wiehe
For much of the last century, estate and inheritance taxes have played an important role in helping states to adequately fund public services in a way that improves the progressivity of state tax systems. While many of the taxes levied by state and local governments fall most heavily on low-income families, only the very wealthy pay estate and inheritance taxes. Recent changes in the federal estate tax, however, culminating in the "fiscal cliff " deal…
Pay-Per-Mile Tax is Only a Partial Fix
• By Carl Davis
The gasoline tax is the single largest source of funding for transportation infrastructure in the United States, but the tax is on an unsustainable course. Sluggish gas tax revenue growth has put strain on transportation budgets at the federal and state levels, and has led to countless debates around the country about how best to pay for America's infrastructure.
STAMP is an Unsound Tool for Gauging the Economic Impact of Taxes
• By Carl Davis
The Beacon Hill Institute (BHI), a free-market think tank located at Suffolk University, frequently uses its State Tax Analysis Modeling Program (STAMP) to perform analyses purporting to show that lowering taxes, or not raising them, will benefit state economies. But STAMP suffers from a number of serious methodological problems and should not be relied upon by anybody seeking to understand the economic impacts of state tax policies.
Improving Tax Fairness with a State Earned Income Tax Credit
• By Meg Wiehe
The simplest, most effective, and most targeted way to begin to counteract regressive state tax codes is a refundable state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia already have some version of a state EITC. Each one is modeled on the federal credit, making it easy for taxpayers to claim and simple for state tax officials to administer. This report explains how all states - even those who already have…
Gas Tax Hits Rock Bottom in Ten States
• By Carl Davis
In most states, the gasoline tax is set at a fixed number of cents per gallon of gas. South Carolina drivers, for example, have been paying 16 cents per gallon in state tax for more than a quarter century.1 But while this type of fixed-rate gas tax may appear to be flat over time, its lack of change in the face of inflation means that its "real" value, or purchasing power, is steadily declining. In…
Most Americans Live in States with Variable-Rate Gas Taxes
• By Carl Davis
The federal government and many states are seeing shortfalls in their transportation budgets in part because the gasoline taxes they use to generate those funds are poorly designed. Thirty-two states and the federal government levy "fixed-rate" gas taxes where the tax rate does not change even as the cost of infrastructure materials inevitably increases over time. The federal government's 18.4 cent gas tax, for example, has not increased in over twenty years. And almost half…
Tennessee Hall Tax Repeal Would Overwhelmingly Benefit the Wealthy, Raise Tennesseans’ Federal Tax Bills by $60 Million
• By Carl Davis
A new analysis performed using the ITEP Microsimulation Tax Model shows that the vast majority of Tennesseans would see very little benefit from Hall Tax repeal. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the tax cuts would flow to the wealthiest 5 percent of Tennessee taxpayers, while another quarter (23 percent) would actually end up in the federal government's coffers. Moreover, if localities respond to Hall Tax repeal by raising property taxes, some Tennesseans could actually face…
90 Reasons We Need State Corporate Tax Reform
• By Matthew Gardner, Richard Phillips
As states struggle with tough budget decisions about funding essential public services, profitable Fortunate 500 companies are paying little or nothing in state income taxes thanks to copious loopholes, lavish giveaways and crafty accounting, a new study by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy reveals.
The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes
• By Matthew Gardner, Richard Phillips
Many of America's Most Profitable Corporations Pay Little or No Federal Income Taxes; Multinationals Pay Higher Rates Abroad Than in the U.S.
Personal Income Tax Reform: Improving the Fairness of Taxes in the District of Columbia
• By Carl Davis
DC's tax system is markedly regressive. This is driven largely by the regressive impact of the city's sales, excise, and property taxes. The personal income tax is the only effective tool that DC has available for offsetting this regressivity. In the comments below I discuss four options for fine-tuning DC's income tax to lessen its impact on moderate- and middle-income taxpayers. I also describe four options for funding those tax cuts with policies that would…
Paying for Education Finance Reform in Colorado
• By Carl Davis
As this report shows, this change would somewhat reduce the steep regressivity of Colorado's overall tax system. In other words, taxpayers across all income levels would pay a more equal share of their income if Amendment 66 is approved, in large part because most of the revenue raised by the amendment would come from the wealthiest 20 percent of Colorado residents.
A Federal Gas Tax for the Future
• By Carl Davis
Gas tax revenues are on an unsustainable course. Over the last five years, Congress has transferred more than $53 billion from the general fund to the transportation fund in order to compensate for lagging gas tax revenues. By 2015, the transportation fund will be insolvent unless an additional $15 billion transfer is made. Larger transfers will be needed in subsequent years.
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