ITEP Work in Action

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal tax credit for workers with low and moderate incomes. The EITC helps to bolster their incomes and offset taxes owed; it is effective at reducing poverty and has traditionally received bipartisan support. But the EITC available to workers without dependent children in the household is small […]

Emerging proposals from the Trump Administration and key congressional Republicans could wreak havoc on essential public services, leaving millions of people worse off through lost health coverage, less money for groceries, weakened access to a quality public education, and other harms.[1]

Legislation[1] was introduced during the January 2025 special legislative session that would repeal Florida’s tuition fairness law.[2] This law, which passed with bipartisan support in 2014, requires that colleges, universities, and postsecondary institutions waive out-of-state tuition for certain undocumented students who graduated high school in the state.

Every year, Idaho spends millions of tax dollars to make sure families receive a good education, live in safe homes and communities, and enjoy good health. However, over the last several years, the state has passed deep and costly tax rate cuts that make our tax system more regressive- disproportionately burdening Idahoans with the lowest incomes. House Bill 40 continues to perpetuate this trend by providing relief disproportionately to wealthy households.

There is little return to show on past border militarization investments. Beginning in 2021, the Governor launched a multi-year campaign called Operation Lone Star that, in part, allowed his Trusteed Programs office to distribute billions of dollars in grants to once resource-starved border communities. SB 1 prepares to double down on this failed investment with […]

Congress should oppose efforts to increase tax breaks for wealthy Americans and highly profitable corporations this year, 56 organizations across Alabama wrote in a letter sent to Alabama’s congressional delegation Wednesday. Lawmakers instead should seek to boost tax credits that expand opportunities for working people and families, the letter said.

A dozen Oregon organizations sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation today calling on them to oppose tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations as part of the upcoming federal tax debate in 2025.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has estimated how much these proposed tax cuts would impact Oklahomans, by income level: 

On November 12, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced that billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would co-chair a new entity, called the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). “Together,” Trump asserted, “these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal Agencies – Essential to the ’Save America’ Movement. … It will become, potentially, the ’Manhattan project’ of our time.”

With portions of the Trump 2017 corporate tax giveaways set to expire in 2025, government watchdog Accountable.US and Americans for Tax Fairness today released a damning new report revealing how a small number of top corporations—including familiar names like Apple, Microsoft, and JP Morgan—bring in a huge amount of national profits while paying shockingly little in taxes. […]

Combining a variety of survey and administrative data, this paper measures the progressivity of taxes and transfers at the U.S. federal level and separately for each state. Read more.

Basic arithmetic suggests that the fiscal goals of President-elect Donald Trump’s treasury pick would slash health care and food security for working- and middle-class families while renewing tax cuts tilted to the wealthy. Read more.

ITEP’s Kamolika Das testified in front of the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission on January 9, 2025. The commission has been charged to examine the city’s overall tax system and propose ways to make it more inclusive, equitable, and growth oriented, and it has been considering changes to the city’s net profits tax and business income […]

The Economic Report of the President (ERP) is an annual report produced by the Council of Economic Advisers. An important vehicle for presenting the Administration’s domestic and international economic policies, it provides an overview of the nation’s economic progress with text and extensive data appendices. The 2024 report cites a 2021 blog written by ITEP’s […]

The United States is exceptional among wealthy nations in its high rate of child poverty. Even more so, the U.S. is known for its high level of deep child poverty—children in families with incomes less than half the poverty line. Read more.

Excessive local government reliance on fines and fees is tied to persistent barriers to economic security. Policies that lift these barriers could open gateways for more Georgians to achieve workforce mobility free from criminal legal system entanglement. Read more.

With President-elect Trump preparing to return to the White House in 2025, it’s worth examining how his proposed policies could impact Hawaiʻi’s  economy, tax system and the household budgets of local working families. Read more.

Accountable.US has found that Long’s Congressional campaign committees took $248,500 from 17 top tax-avoiding corporations. These 17 companies paid an astonishing average effective tax rate of -0.4% on over $289 billion in collective profits they made in the first five years of the 2017 Trump tax cuts—which Long voted for. Read more.

Today, Gov. Jay Inslee released a balanced budget proposal that protects progress on the programs and services that working families and businesses depend on — public safety, education, early learning, housing and behavioral health. Read more.

Sen. Warren cited ITEP’s research at a November 20, 2024 hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. To read her remarks, click here. To read the research, click here.

Reforming New Jersey's tax system would reduce income inequality and provide revenues needed for public investments to make the state more affordable. 

The expiration of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2025 is a critical opportunity to set economic policy for the next decade. The TCJA has been an abject failure for American families. Every year since it passed in 2017, it has diverted taxpayer money to exorbitant tax breaks for the ultrawealthy and powerful corporations while everyday Americans have struggled to make ends meet. The 2025 tax fight is our opportunity to promote competition and curb corporate concentration, lower costs for working families, raise the revenue we need to invest in core priorities and promote a democratized, multiracial economy.

California’s undocumented residents contribute nearly $8.5 billion in taxes, playing a crucial role in supporting public services while remaining excluded from essential programs. Read more.

On October 25, 2024, ITEP Policy Analyst Brakeyshia Samms discussed race and the 2017 Trump tax law on the webinar “The 2025 Sunsetting of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA): Tax Justice on the Frontlines,” which was hosted by the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil Rights & Social Justice. Slides can be downloaded here […]