The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), enacted by President Trump and Congressional Republicans at the end of 2017, has caused quite a bit of confusion, and a recent “Fact Checker” column by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler does not help. TCJA created real problems that can’t be resolved without real tax reform. To begin that process fact checkers, lawmakers, and everyone else need to be clear about what TCJA did, and did not, do to our tax system.
Tax Reform Debate
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blog February 13, 2019 Fact-Checking on Trump Tax Law Needs a Fact Check
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blog February 5, 2019 New ITEP Report Shows How Congress Can Meet Public Demand for Progressive Taxes
A recent headline tells us that bold tax plans proposed by lawmakers today reflect a “profound shift in public mood.” But, in fact, the public’s mood has not changed at all. Americans have long wanted progressive taxes but few, if any, lawmakers publicly backed this view. What’s happening now isn’t a shift in public opinion, rather it’s Washington finally catching up with the American people.
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report February 5, 2019 Progressive Revenue-Raising Options
America has long needed a more equitable tax code that raises enough revenue to invest in building shared prosperity. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), enacted at the end of 2017, moved the federal tax code in the opposite direction, reducing revenue by $1.9 trillion over a decade, opening new loopholes, and providing its most significant benefits to the well-off. The law cut taxes on the wealthy directly by reducing their personal income taxes and estate taxes, and indirectly by reducing corporate taxes.
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blog February 1, 2019 Senator Sanders Proposes to Reform the Estate Tax
Progressive tax proposals are finally being discussed with the urgency and seriousness they deserve. Following Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a much higher marginal tax rate for multi-millionaires and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to introduce a wealth tax for those at the very top, Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced a revised version of his proposal to reform the federal estate tax.
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blog January 8, 2019 How to Think About the 70% Top Tax Rate Proposed by Ocasio-Cortez (and Multiple Scholars)
The uproar deliberately steers clear of any real policy discussion about what a significantly higher marginal tax rate would mean. Her critics are mostly the same lawmakers who enacted a massive tax cut for the rich last year that was not debated seriously or supported by serious research. Meanwhile, multiple scholarly studies conclude a 70 percent top tax rate would be an optimal way to tax the very rich. Ocasio-Cortez has brought more attention to the very real need to raise revenue and do it in a progressive way.
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blog December 17, 2018 Five Things to Know on the One-Year Anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
While it has only been a year since passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), it’s clear the law largely is both a debacle and a boondoggle. Below are the five takeaways about the legacy and continuing effect of the TCJA.
1. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will substantially increase income, wealth, and racial inequality.
2. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will continue to substantially increase the deficit.
3. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not significantly boosting growth or jobs.
4. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act continues to be very unpopular.
5. Despite the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s lack of popularity and ill effects, many Republican lawmakers are calling for even more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. -
blog December 12, 2018 End-of-Year Tax Measure Would Give Deficit-Financed Tax Cuts to Wealthy Families and Corporations
Outgoing Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) today introduced legislation that includes $80 billion in tax cuts that are unpaid for and largely benefit the wealthy. The bill would, among its numerous provisions, expand retirement and education savings programs that offer very little value to low-income families, delay the Health Insurance Tax for an additional two years, and delay the Medical Device Tax for an additional five years.
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report December 6, 2018 The Federal Estate Tax: An Important Progressive Revenue Source
For years, wealth and income inequality have been widening at a troubling pace. One study estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 42 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012, up from 28 percent in 1989. Lawmakers have exacerbated this trend by dramatically cutting federal taxes on inherited wealth, most recently by doubling the estate tax exemption as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Further, lawmakers have done little to stop aggressive accounting schemes designed to avoid the estate tax altogether. This report explains how the percentage of estates subject to the federal estate tax has dropped dramatically from 2.16 percent in 2000 to just 0.06 percent in 2018, a 34-fold decrease in 19 years.
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report November 14, 2018 A Fair Way to Limit Tax Deductions
The cap on federal tax deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) that is in effect now under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is a flawed provision but repealing it outright would be costly and provide a windfall to the rich. Congress should consider replacing the SALT cap with a different type of limit on deductions that would avoid both of these outcomes. Using the ITEP microsimulation tax model, this report provides revenue estimates and distributional estimates for several such options, assuming they would be in effect in 2019.
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blog November 8, 2018 The Post-Midterms Tax Policy Outlook: Small Ball and Real Tax Reform Debate
With most of the results of the 2018 midterm elections in, the broad landscape for federal tax policy over the next couple years is coming into view. Democratic control of the House and Republican control of the Senate means a significant tax overhaul is unlikely, but minor tax changes may happen. And the run-up to the 2020 presidential election will force more robust debate over the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and what aspects of the legislation should be repealed, reformed, or built upon.
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blog October 24, 2018 Shaking up TCJA: How a Proposed New Credit Could Shift Federal Tax Cuts from the Wealthy and Corporations to Working People
A new federal proposal, the Livable Incomes for Families Today (LIFT) the Middle Class Act, would create a new refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income working families who were little more than an afterthought in last year’s federal tax overhaul. This proposal would take the place of TCJA, providing tax cuts similar in cost to the recent federal tax law but targeted toward working people rather than the wealthy. ITEP analyzed the bill, proposed by California Senator Kamala Harris, and compared its potential impact to TCJA.
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blog October 23, 2018 Tax Policies Have Increased Inequality, and So Would Entitlement Cuts
Conversations about economics often take place on different planets, it seems. Economists and analysts note rising inequality in America. And it’s not just lefty analysts. The credit ratings firm Moody’s chimed in earlier this month, warning that inequality “is a key social consideration that will impact the U.S.’ credit profile through multiple rating factors, including economic, institutional and fiscal strength.”
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report October 11, 2018 ITEP Comments and Recommendations on Proposed Section 170 Regulation (REG-112176-18)
The IRS recently proposed a commonsense improvement to the federal charitable deduction. If finalized, the regulation would prevent not just the newest workarounds to the $10,000 deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), but also a longer-running tax shelter abused by wealthy donors to private K-12 school voucher programs. ITEP has submitted official comments outlining four key recommendations related to the proposed regulation.
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press release September 28, 2018 U.S. House Advances More Unpopular Tax Cuts That Primarily Benefit the Wealthy
The U.S. House this week voted on so-called Tax Cuts 2.0, a package of three tax bills that, among other things, would make permanent temporary provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Alan Essig, ITEP’s executive director, said the following: “While top-heavy tax cuts and their inevitable effect of decimating public investments may seem peripheral to today’s news cycle, they are emblematic of the governing philosophy of those in power today.”
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September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 Resources
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. GOP leaders wrote the bill this way to adhere to their own rule that limits how much a piece of legislation can add to the federal debt. But it’s clear that proponents planned all along to make those provisions permanent. Less than a month after the law passed, the White House and Republican leaders began calling for a second round of tax cuts. Now, they have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. And they falsely claim that making these provisions permanent will benefit the middle class.
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blog August 10, 2018 How Opportunity Zones Benefit Investors and Promote Displacement
The idea behind the new tax break is to provide an incentive for wealthy individuals to invest in the economies of struggling communities. Despite alleged intentions, it appears opportunity zones are turning into yet another windfall for wealthy investors and may encourage displacement of people in low-income areas, working against the provision’s intended goal.
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blog August 1, 2018 The Preferential Tax Treatment of Capital Gains Income Should Be Curbed, Not Substantially Expanded
For true believers in supply-side economics, however, one major flaw of the TCJA is that it did not further cut taxes for the wealthy by reducing capital gains tax rates. But now the Trump Administration is considering using executive action to remedy this by indexing capital gains to inflation for tax purposes.
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report July 17, 2018 Understanding and Fixing the New International Corporate Tax System
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) radically changed the international tax system. It slashed taxes on corporate income, both domestic and foreign. It encouraged U.S. multinational corporations to shift jobs, profits, and tangible property abroad, and keep intangibles home. This report describes the new international tax system—and its many gaps—and also provides a road map for how to fix these gaps and surveys recent legislative approaches.
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blog July 11, 2018 The Immediate Economic Impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Could be Even Less Than Expected
Now, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco finds that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may not be so much of a stimulus after all. In other words, lawmakers have left themselves with few options should the country face an economic recession, and the country may not receive a substantive economic benefit in the short term.
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report July 11, 2018 Federal Tax Cuts in the Bush, Obama, and Trump Years
Since 2000, tax cuts have reduced federal revenue by trillions of dollars and disproportionately benefited well-off households. From 2001 through 2018, significant federal tax changes have reduced revenue by $5.1 trillion, with nearly two-thirds of that flowing to the richest fifth of Americans.
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blog June 6, 2018 New Legislation Would Close Significant Offshore Loopholes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
One simple rule should drive the nation’s international tax policies: tax the offshore profits of American companies the same way their domestic profits are taxed. The latest legislation to approach that ideal is the Per-Country Minimum Act (H.R. 6015), from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR). The DeFazio bill closes the loophole that allows corporations to use foreign tax credits to shelter profits in tax havens from U.S. taxes. No other bill addresses this.
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blog May 21, 2018 Debate Over New Jersey’s Millionaires and ITEP’s Data
New Jersey’s new governor, Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to raise state income taxes on millionaires, a proposal that is supported by 70 percent of the state and was, until recently, backed by New Jersey’s Senate President, Steve Sweeney. In recent months, Sweeney changed his position on the proposed millionaires tax and called for an increase in New Jersey’s corporate tax instead. The idea of hiking taxes on corporations is not a bad one, particularly since corporations received a windfall from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But Sweeney’s new opposition to an income tax hike for the state’s richest residents seems to be based on an erroneous reading of ITEP’s data.
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blog May 15, 2018 There Is No Evidence That the New Tax Law Is Growing Our Economy or Creating Jobs
The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Wednesday. Proponents of the law likely will use the occasion to tout its alleged economic benefits and argue that its temporary provisions should be made permanent. The title of the hearing is “Growing Our Economy and Creating Jobs,” but there is little evidence that the law does either of these things.
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blog May 10, 2018 No Work Requirements for the Richest 1 Percent — Most of Their Tax Cuts Are for Unearned Income
The Trump Administration is pushing to add or strengthen work requirements for programs that benefit low- and middle-income people but holds a different view when it comes to the wealthy. Most tax cuts enjoyed by the richest 1 percent of households under the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Job Act (TCJA) are tax cuts for unearned income.
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blog May 2, 2018 New UK Law May Shut Down the Biggest Tax Havens — Aside from the U.S.
The United Kingdom’s parliament has enacted a new law requiring its overseas territories — which include notorious tax havens like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the British Virgin Islands — to start disclosing by 2020 the owners of corporations they register. This could shut down a huge amount of offshore tax evasion and other financial crimes because individuals from anywhere in the world, including the United States. have long been able to set up secret corporations in these tax havens to stash their money.
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blog April 27, 2018 Trump Administration’s Spending Priorities Echo Tax Cut Priorities: Punish the Poor and Lavish the Rich
In 2017, the Trump Administration released a budget proposal filled with loaded language about “welfare reform” and moving able-bodied people from welfare to work. This narrative is designed to perpetuate the pernicious idea that poor people have personal shortcomings and are taking something that rightly belongs to others.
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blog April 19, 2018 Congressional Budget Office: New Tax Law Helps Foreign Investors Even More than You Thought
President Trump and his allies in Congress have made many wild claims about economic growth that would result from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And the Congressional Budget Office just released a report revealing the TCJA will, in fact, create economic growth — for foreign investors.
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report April 11, 2018 The U.S. Is One of the Least Taxed Developed Countries
The most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that the United States is one of the least taxed of the developed nations.
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blog April 10, 2018 New ITEP Report: Extension of the Temporary TCJA Provisions Would Be Just as Regressive as TCJA Itself
A new ITEP report estimates the impacts in every state of the much-discussed idea of extending the temporary provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which will expire after 2025 without further action from Congress. The report concludes that extending or making permanent these provisions would be just as skewed to the wealthy as the original law.
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report April 10, 2018 Extensions of the New Tax Law’s Temporary Provisions Would Mainly Benefit the Wealthy
This analysis finds that extending the temporary tax provisions in 2026 would not be aimed at helping the middle-class any more than TCJA as enacted helps the middle-class in 2018.
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blog April 5, 2018 Passing the Buck: Forcing Spending Cuts through a Balanced Budget Amendment
House leaders are preparing a vote on a balanced budget amendment next week that could force massive spending cuts and restrict the ability of lawmakers to raise revenue. Although a balanced budget amendment will likely be pitched as a way to address our nation’s long-term fiscal challenges, such proposals are economically harmful, ineffective, and one-sided.
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blog March 23, 2018 Unintended Consequences of the New Tax Bill Keep Cropping Up
Due to its rushed passage in a matter of weeks, without public hearings or enough time even for basic proofreading, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) contains numerous unintended consequences that Congress is now scrambling to fix. The authors of the new law have openly admitted that the law includes major mistakes. One of the most prominent drafting errors is what is now known as the “grain glitch,” which temporarily created a huge incentive for farmers to sell their products to cooperatives over businesses taking other forms.
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blog March 15, 2018 The Public Interest Consensus Against the Tax Extenders
The Heritage Foundation, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) routinely disagree on a wide range of policy issues, but a recent Ways and Means Tax Policy Subcommittee hearing revealed they all agree that the continual and unpaid-for extension of temporary tax breaks needs to end.
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report March 14, 2018 ITEP Testimony on “Post Tax Reform Evaluation of Recently Expired Tax Provisions”
Statement of Richard Phillips, Senior Policy Analyst
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
Before the Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax Policy
Hearing on “Post Tax Reform Evaluation of Recently Expired Tax Provisions” -
blog February 23, 2018 Why the Minute Federal 529 Provision Has Huge Consequences for States
When Republican leaders rushed through an overhaul to the federal tax code over a seven-week legislative period, they failed to acknowledge that many provisions in their bill would have negative consequences for states. One such provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that undermines state laws is the expansion of federal tax breaks that now allows taxpayers to use 529 savings plans to pay for private K-12 education.
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blog February 15, 2018 Mnuchin’s Not So Grand Stand on the Carried Interest Loophole Explained
When President Trump released the initial outline of his tax reform plan in April, carried interest repeal was nowhere to be found. And when Congress hammered out a tax plan in late December, lawmakers agreed to reduce the cost of the carried interest tax provision by about 5 percent. (Full repeal would have raised $20 billion over a decade; the enacted provision raises about $1 billion.)
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blog February 9, 2018 How the Latest Budget Deals Expose the Failure of “Tax Reform”
If there was one thing that tax reform legislation was supposed to accomplish, it was to put an end to the scandalous semiannual ritual of extending and expanding the list of the temporary provisions in the tax code, known as tax extenders. During the passage of the last tax extenders bill at the end of December 2015, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed that it was critical to have a tax code that provides “permanency and certainty” and to move forward with comprehensive tax reform that would decide the fate of the extenders once and for all. Unfortunately, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act not only failed to eliminate the tax extenders, it significantly expanded the number of temporary provisions in the code.
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blog February 3, 2018 How Much Will Typical Middle-Class Workers Really See Their Paychecks Change?
The campaign by Republican leaders in Congress to promote their new tax law has two prongs. One is the claim that corporate income tax cuts are already trickling down to workers, which, as we have explained, is believed by basically no economists anywhere. The other prong of their campaign is to argue that the personal income tax cuts will provide a noticeable decline in withholding from paychecks that middle-class people will notice soon. At this point, it’s helpful to look at some actual data and see how small the boost in take-home pay will really be for most Americans.
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blog January 31, 2018 Fact-Checking Trump’s State of the Union Address on Tax Issues
Here are some claims the President made during his State of the Union address, along with the facts.
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blog January 26, 2018 Moody’s and Conservative Economists Agree: The Trump Corporate Tax Cut Is Not Helping Workers
Moody’s does not believe that corporate tax cuts are trickling down to working people as bonuses and pay raises. The real problem with the corporate PR campaign is that even those economists who supported Trump’s corporate tax cut and claimed it would help workers do not believe that it works this way.
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blog January 25, 2018 IRS Can and Should Block “Charitable Contribution” Schemes
States’ attempts to work around the new federal tax law and ensure their residents continue to maximally benefit from state and local tax (SALT) deductions have been in the news since the beginning of the year. At a panel discussion for tax professionals in Washington Thursday, Thomas West, tax legislative counsel at the Treasury Department, cast doubt on proposed work-around schemes that would convert state income tax payments into “charitable contributions.”
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blog January 24, 2018 It’s a Small Bonus After All
The Walt Disney Corporation announced this week that in the wake of the new tax bill’s passage, it will spend $125 million on one-time bonuses and $50 million on an education program for some employees, all in 2018. This $175 million spending commitment is notable for two reasons: it’s temporary, and it’s a drop in the bucket for a company that’s likely to see annual tax savings of $1.2 billion a year and has already committed to a $50 billion-plus corporate acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s assets.
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blog January 17, 2018 Repealing, or Working Around, the Cap on State and Local Tax Deductions Would Make the Trump-GOP Tax Law Even More Unfair
A bipartisan proposal in Congress to eliminate the new $10,000 cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) would cost more than $86 billion in 2019 alone and two-thirds of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent of households. Unfortunately, “work around” proposals in some states to allow their residents to avoid the new federal cap would likely have the same regressive effect on the overall tax code.
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blog January 12, 2018 The Problems with State Workarounds to the Federal SALT Deduction
From the outset, states—particularly wealthier states—objected to the GOP’s proposal to limit SALT deductions in part because it reduces the amount of state and local taxes that the federal government essentially picks up for taxpayers (by allowing a SALT deduction, the federal government is, in effect, paying part of taxpayers’ state and local tax bill), which could hinder states’ ability to raise revenue. Simply focusing on SALT, though, misses the bigger picture. The fact remains that the overall tax bill disproportionately benefits higher-income taxpayers even with the $10,000 SALT cap in place. Responding to federal tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich with state proposals that help bestow more tax cuts on upper-income taxpayers is irrational.
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blog January 12, 2018 The Walmart Smiley Face Is Lying: Corporate Tax Cuts Are Not Causing Pay Raises and Bonuses
Last night, Yahoo reported that 81 corporations had announced pay raises and bonuses that they claim result from the Trump-GOP tax law’s reduction in the official corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Of these 81 corporations, 13 were included in ITEP’s most recent corporate tax study, which focuses on the Fortune 500 companies that were profitable every year from 2008 through 2015. These 13 companies had a combined effective tax rate of just 19.1 percent, which undermines the idea that the federal corporate tax rate was holding back their ability to pay workers.
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blog January 10, 2018 New Tax Breaks for Craft Beer Are a Drop in the Barrel: 76 percent of Tax Bill’s Beer Tax Cut Goes to a Handful of the Biggest Producers
The $1.5 trillion tax cut that took effect on Jan.1 was never really going to be about small businesses, despite President Trump’s transparently false claims to the contrary. However, one economic sector still appears happy, for now, to hoist a mug to Congress’s successful sleight of hand: craft breweries.
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blog December 22, 2017 Corporate America, You Just Got a $650 Billion Tax Cut! What Are You Going to Do Next?
While many Fortune 500 CEO’s likely had to restrain themselves from preemptively shouting “we’re going to Disneyland” in an homage to the Disney Corporation’s trademark ad spot involving the winner of each year’s Super Bowl, it’s pretty understandable that several of them—including known tax avoiders AT&T, Boeing, Comcast and Wells Fargo—would preemptively make grandiose promises that they will reserve part of their tax cuts for the little people who made it all possible.
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blog December 19, 2017 Final Tax Bill Hits Parents of College Students Harder than Other Taxpayers
While many provisions targeting higher education in previous versions of the tax plan were eventually dropped, little thought has been given to how the bill still raises taxes on parents at the time they are trying to pay for college tuition.
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blog December 18, 2017 Corker Claims Provisions Benefiting Him Could Not Have Changed His Vote Because He Never Read the Bill
Many Republicans who had previously claimed to be deficit hawks have been cheerfully supportive of major tax-cutting legislation as it has moved forward this fall. But one Republican Senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee, has taken a defiant stance on the issue, insisting that “passing off increased debt to future generations” would be a deal-breaker for him. When the Senate passed its version of the tax plan last week, Corker was the only Republican to vote No.
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blog December 17, 2017 Final GOP-Trump Bill Still Forces California and New York to Shoulder a Larger Share of Federal Taxes Under Final GOP-Trump Tax Bill; Texas, Florida, and Other States Will Pay Less
Residents of California and New York pay a large amount of the nation’s federal personal income taxes relative to their share of the population. As illustrated by the table below, the final GOP-Trump tax bill expected to be approved this week would substantially increase the share of total federal personal income taxes (PIT) paid by both states. Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey would also see their share of federal PIT increase.