Trump Tax Policies
Hearing Witness: Trump Administration Giving Tax Breaks Not Allowed by Law
February 12, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff
The Treasury Department, tasked with issuing regulations to implement the hastily drafted Trump-GOP tax law, is concocting new tax breaks that are not provided in the law. This is the short version of what we learned while watching Tuesday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax.”
Guilty, Not GILTI: Unclear Whether Corps Continue to Lower Their Tax Bills Via Tax Haven Abuse
January 7, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner
President Trump and GOP lawmakers often cited corporations’ abuse of tax havens, e.g. shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes, as justification for dramatically lowering the federal corporate tax rate under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By 2016, corporations’ offshore cash haul had grown to $2.6 trillion, representing hundreds of billions in lost federal tax […]
Corporate Tax Avoidance Is Mostly Legal—and That’s the Problem
December 19, 2019 • By Steve Wamhoff
As usual, corporate spokespersons and their allies are trying to push back against ITEP’s latest study showing that many corporations pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. One way they respond is by stating that everything they do is perfectly legal. This is an attempt by the corporate world to change the subject. The entire point of ITEP’s study is that Congress has allowed corporations to avoid paying taxes, and that this must change.
Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Year of the Trump Tax Law
December 16, 2019 • By ITEP Staff, Lorena Roque, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
Profitable Fortune 500 companies avoided $73.9 billion in taxes under the first year of the Trump-GOP tax law. The study includes financial filings by 379 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable in 2018; it excludes companies that reported a loss.
Census Numbers Show the Power of the Tax Code to Direct Resources to Low-Income Families
September 10, 2019 • By Jessica Schieder
Refundable federal tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), lifted 7.9 million people out of poverty in 2018. This latest analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates the power of federal programs to alleviate poverty and help low-income families keep up with the increasing cost of living.
How Tax Policy Can Help Mitigate Poverty, Address Income Inequality
September 10, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
Analysts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have produced multiple recent briefs and reports that provide insight on how current and proposed tax policies affect family economic security and income inequality.
Updated Estimates from ITEP: Trump Tax Law Still Benefits the Rich No Matter How You Look at It
August 28, 2019 • By Steve Wamhoff
President Trump’s allies in Congress continue to defend their 2017 tax law in misleading ways. Just last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee stated that most “of the tax overhaul went into the pockets of working families and Main Street businesses who need it most, not Wall Street.” ITEP’s most recent analysis estimates that in 2020 the richest 5 percent of taxpayers will receive $145 billion in tax cuts, or half the law's benefits to U.S. taxpayers.
TCJA by the Numbers, 2020
August 28, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law by President Trump at the end of 2017, includes provisions that dramatically cut taxes and provisions that offset a fraction of the revenue loss by eliminating or limiting certain tax breaks. This page includes estimates of TCJA’s impacts in 2020.
The Mortgage Interest Deduction Is a House of Cards
August 12, 2019 • By Jessica Schieder
Given how much more exclusively this deduction now benefits the highest-income households, its continued existence is hard to justify. Even when the credit was available to a larger swath of families, it was ineffective at promoting homeownership.
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A Timeline
August 7, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
In December 2017, federal lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So rushed was its passage that provisions of the legislative text were scrawled in the margins. Scroll through this timeline for an in-depth look at the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the impact since its passage.
Bootstraps Remain an Ineffective Tool for Combatting Poverty
May 17, 2019 • By Jenice Robinson
Policymakers and the public widely agree that economic inequality is the social policy problem of our age. It threatens the livelihoods of millions of children and adults, and it even threatens our democracy. Although some say Americans could fix it themselves by simply rolling up their sleeves, as a sub-headline in a March U.S. News and World Report column implied, the reality is different.
So-Called Opportunity Zones Provide Opportunity for Whom?
April 23, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
In early April, a diverse but mostly black crowd took to the streets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. to protest T-Mobile’s decision to order Metro PCS to cease playing gogo music. This tale is a shining example of why economic investment—especially taxpayer-incentivized investment—in underserved communities is fraught with controversy. Who ultimately benefits after developers pour millions of dollars into these communities? And, as this controversy reveals, are the usually black and brown denizens of these neighborhoods and businesses that may have catered to them no longer welcome once economic development reaches a critical mass?
$4.3 Billion in Rebates, Zero-Tax Bill for 60 Profitable Corps Directly Related to Loopholes
April 12, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
Meet the new corporate tax system, same as the old corporate tax system. That’s the inescapable conclusion of a new ITEP report assessing the taxpaying behavior of America’s most profitable corporations. The report, Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Law, released earlier this week, finds that 60 Fortune 500 corporations disclose paying zero in federal income taxes in 2018 despite enjoying large profits.
Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Tax Law
April 11, 2019 • By Lorena Roque, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
For decades, profitable Fortune 500 companies have been able to manipulate the tax system to avoid paying even a dime in tax on billions of dollars in U.S. profits. This ITEP report provides the first comprehensive look at how the new corporate tax laws that took effect after the passage of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affects the scale of corporate tax avoidance.
The Trump Tax Law Further Tilted an Already Uneven Playing Field
March 27, 2019 • By Jessica Schieder
Proponents sold the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as a way to spur new investment, increase workers’ paychecks, and reverse the off-shoring of jobs. Testimony presented during a House Ways and Means hearing held today reflected on how—more than a year after the law’s passage—each of those pitches ring hollow.
Corporate Profits ?, Corporate Federal Tax Collections ?
March 25, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
Data released Friday by the U.S. Treasury Department should give great pause to all who care about the federal government’s ability to raise revenue in a fair, sustainable way. In the wake of the 2017 corporate tax overhaul, corporate tax collections have fallen at a rate never seen during a period of economic growth.
Fact-Checking on Trump Tax Law Needs a Fact Check
February 13, 2019 • By Carl Davis
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.
Why We Should Talk about Progressive Taxes Despite Billionaires’ Objections
January 30, 2019 • By Jenice Robinson
It was the tone-deaf remark heard ‘round the world. Last week on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that furloughed government employees who hadn’t been paid in a month could go to a bank and get a loan to make ends meet. This was not a gaffe. It’s hard to fathom how a […]
Five Things to Know on the One-Year Anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
December 17, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
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…
Morgan Stanley Report Confirms Tax Cut Promises Made Are Promises Unkept
December 7, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
Almost a year after lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, evidence continues to mount that it is providing far more tax cuts than jobs. A new Morgan Stanley report estimates that U.S. companies repatriated between $50 billion and $100 billion of offshore cash in the third quarter of 2018. This means companies […]
Tax Cuts 2.0 Resources
September 26, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
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…
65 Percent of Federal Tax Cuts Since 2000 Have Gone to Richest 20 Percent
July 11, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Since 2000, Congress has passed several rounds of tax cuts that have increased the federal deficit by nearly $6 trillion and disproportionately benefited the top 20 percent of households, which received nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the value of all tax changes.
Why We’re Not Eternally Grateful for $1,000 Crumbs
February 20, 2018 • By Jenice Robinson
Two narratives that intentionally obscure who benefits from the tax law are emerging. One focuses on the personal income tax cuts that will result in an increase in net take-home pay for many employees once their employers adjust withholding. Anecdotes abound of working people getting a $100 or more increase, after taxes, per paycheck, but the reality is that most workers will receive a lot less than that. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1 percent of households will receive an average annual tax break of $55,000, an amount that nearly eclipses the nation’s median household income.
They Can’t Help Themselves: GOP Leaders Reveal True Intent Behind Tax Overhaul
December 4, 2017 • By Jenice Robinson
The hand-written scrawls in the margins of the hastily written 500-page Senate tax bill had barely dried when lawmakers began to reveal the true motivation behind their rush to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s tax code.
ITEP research is pivotal in explaining the effect of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and other Trump administration tax policy proposals at both the state and national levels, including how current law contributes to regressivity in the tax code and rising inequality.
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