January 14, 2025 • By Rita Jefferson
Lawmakers across the country are taking aim at property taxes with a new strategy: raising sales taxes instead. Doing so would create a regressive tax shift that puts unfair burdens on renters and reduces the strength of local government revenues.
November 26, 2024 • By Neva Butkus
Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will not make Louisiana more competitive. Rather, they will blow a hole in the state budget while asking low- and middle-income working families to make up the difference. Gov. Landry and the Louisiana legislature would make much better use of their time looking for ways to make Louisiana’s tax structure fairer and more capable of adequately funding important priorities.
November 12, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer
Federal, state, and local tax codes are important but underused tools that can create a more climate-resilient, less carbon-emitting America. A modernized tax code would stop subsidizing emissions and instead encourage lower-carbon design. Because cars and trucks produce roughly one-fourth of US greenhouse gas emissions, transportation taxation is a great starting point.
October 17, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
As we approach November’s election, voters in several states will be weighing in on tax policy changes. The outcomes will impact the equity of state and local tax systems and the adequacy of the revenue those systems are able to raise to fund public services.
August 6, 2024 • By Marco Guzman
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.
July 18, 2024 • By Aidan Davis
Major tax cuts were largely rejected this year, but states continue to chip away at income taxes. And while property tax cuts were a hot topic across the country, many states failed to deliver effective solutions to affordability issues.
April 16, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Eli Byerly-Duke
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 income scale. For the bottom 40 percent of families, California taxes are lower than states like Florida and Texas. The highest earners usually pay higher […]
October 19, 2023 • By Neva Butkus
Meaningful investments in Indiana’s future require a smart, and fair, tax code that recognizes current economic realities and can raise a sustainable stream of funding from those most able to pay.
August 3, 2023 • By Marco Guzman
This year, 19 states will forgo a combined $1.6 billion in tax revenue on sales tax holidays—politically popular, yet ultimately ineffective gimmicks with minimal benefits and significant downsides.
August 2, 2023 • By Marco Guzman
Nineteen states have sales tax holidays on the books in 2023, and these suspensions will cost nearly $1.6 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. Overall, the benefits of sales tax holidays are minimal while their downsides are significant.
July 20, 2022 • By Marco Guzman
Twenty states this year have decided to go so far as to forgo a combined $1 billion in vital tax revenue in favor of conveniently popular yet ultimately ineffective sales tax holidays. Whether it’s a state looking for a way to help families manage the rising cost of goods or to celebrate back-to-school shopping season, these policy options are poorly targeted and an inadequate use of state tax revenue that could be doing more to make childcare more affordable, health care more accessible and high-quality education available to everyone.
July 20, 2022 • By Marco Guzman
Lawmakers in many states have enacted “sales tax holidays” (20 states will hold them in 2022) to temporarily suspend the tax on purchases of clothing, school supplies, and other items. These holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, but their benefits are minimal while their downsides are significant—particularly as lawmakers have sought to apply the concept as a substitute for more meaningful, permanent reform or arbitrarily reward people with specific hobbies or in certain professions. This policy brief looks at sales tax holidays as a tax reduction device.
April 19, 2022 • By Carl Davis
In 2021, the 11 states that allowed legal sales within their borders raised nearly $3 billion in cannabis excise tax revenue, an increase of 33 percent compared to a year earlier. While the tax remains a small part of state budgets, it’s beginning to eclipse other “sin taxes” that states have long had on the books.
March 5, 2021 • By Carl Davis
Many state governments are struggling to repair and expand their transportation infrastructure because they are attempting to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with fixed-rate gasoline taxes that are rarely increased.
July 29, 2020 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
Lawmakers in many states have enacted “sales tax holidays” (16 states will hold them in 2020) to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, school supplies, and other items. These holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, but their benefits are minimal while their downsides are significant—and amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy brief looks at sales tax holidays as a tax reduction device.
April 29, 2020 • By Estefan Hernandez Escoto
Many states are making the decline in sales tax collection worse by failing to apply their sales taxes to digital goods (such as downloads of music, movies, or software) and services (such as digital streaming). A state that taxes movie theater tickets but not digital streaming, for instance, is needlessly hastening the decline of its own sales tax.
April 2, 2020 • By Carl Davis, ITEP Staff, Meg Wiehe
One pressing question is what will an economic downturn in which consumers are anxious, facing job loss, or simply spending their time sheltering in place and not spending money in typical ways, mean for states’ ability to raise revenue?
March 6, 2020 • By Carl Davis
Alaska’s tax system underwent major changes in the 1970s when oil was found at Prudhoe Bay. Lawmakers repealed the state’s personal income tax (making Alaska the only state ever to do so) and began balancing the state’s budget primarily with oil tax and royalty revenue instead. But as oil prices and production levels have declined, a yawning gap has opened between state revenues and the cost of providing vital public services.
February 5, 2020 • By Carl Davis
Itemized deductions are problematic tax subsidies that need to close. The mortgage interest deduction, for instance, is often lauded as a way to help middle-class families afford homes and charitable deductions are touted as incentivizing gifts to charitable organizations. But the dirty little secret is that itemized deductions primarily benefit higher-income households while largely failing to achieve their purported goals.
November 25, 2019 • By Carl Davis
The last few years have brought major improvements in how states enforce their sales tax laws on purchases made over the Internet. Less than a decade ago, e-retailers almost never collected the sales taxes owed by their customers. The result was a multi-billion dollar drain on state coffers and a competitive disadvantage for local businesses. But this holiday season looks a bit different.
September 26, 2019 • By Guest Blogger
Lawmakers in Maine this year took bold steps toward making the state’s tax system fairer. Their actions demonstrate that political will can dramatically alter state tax policy landscape to improve economic well-being for low-income families while also ensuring the wealthy pay a fairer share.
September 26, 2019 • By Aidan Davis
This report presents a comprehensive overview of anti-poverty tax policies, surveys tax policy decisions made in the states in 2019 and offers recommendations that every state should consider to help families rise out of poverty. States can jump start their anti-poverty efforts by enacting one or more of four proven and effective tax strategies to reduce the share of taxes paid by low- and moderate-income families: state Earned Income Tax Credits, property tax circuit breakers, targeted low-income credits, and child-related tax credits.
September 26, 2019 • By Aidan Davis
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.
August 22, 2019 • By Carl Davis
New tax data out of California, the world’s largest market for legal cannabis, tell a complicated story about the cannabis industry and its tax revenue potential. Legal cannabis markets take time to establish, and depending on local market conditions, the revenue states raise can vary significantly.
August 7, 2019 • By Carl Davis
Cannabis tax revenue is becoming more significant as legal sales grow. The tax is far from a budgetary panacea, but an ITEP analysis of revenue data reported by the seven states with legal cannabis sales underway suggests that excise and sales tax revenues from the sale of the drug could reach $1.6 billion this year.
Sales, excise, and gas taxes are an important source of revenue for states. The sales tax, in fact accounts for half of all state tax revenue. Forty-five states levy broad-based sales taxes, every state levies at least some type of tax on consumption, and all states have a tax on gasoline. But these taxes aren’t without problems.
Sales taxes are inherently regressive—requiring lower- and middle-income taxpayers to spend a larger share of their household budgets in tax than their wealthier neighbors. The gas tax provides funding for infrastructure, but many states have not modernized their gas tax, meaning it no longer raises adequate revenue. ITEP resources on sales, excise and gas taxes provide general and state-specific information about the mechanics of these taxes and options for reform.