District of Columbia
You Can’t Tax Stolen Land
• By Misha Hill
The Montana Senate this week stopped a bill to restructure the state's temporary tribal tax exemption program, making tribal governments the only sovereignties on which Montana levies a tax and making it more difficult for leaders to buy back illegally seized land. Still, the success of the bill in the House is troubling.
The DC Line: – David Schwartzman: By Offsetting Federal Tax Cuts Locally, We Can Improve the Quality of Life for All DC Residents
• By Misha Hill
Misha Hill of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has estimated that the top 20 percent income bracket of DC residents will receive almost $700 million in federal tax cuts this year, with most ($541 million) going to the top 5 percent (with incomes above $319,000 per year). The same study finds that […]
State Rundown 3/27: Spring Bringing Smart State Tax Policy So Far
• By ITEP Staff
Though a long winter and a rough start to spring weather have wreaked havoc in much of the country, lawmakers are off to a good start in the world of state fiscal policy so far. In the last week, a progressive revenue package was passed in the nick of time in NEW MEXICO, a service-sapping tax cut was vetoed in KANSAS, and a regressive and unsustainable tax shift was soundly defeated in NORTH DAKOTA. Meanwhile, gas tax updates…
North Dakota Senate Should Put the Freeze on House Tax-Cut Plan
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
Lawmakers in Bismarck were treated last weekend to the largest single day of snowfall the city has ever seen. As state senators begin weighing a bill recently passed by the House that would replace the state's income taxes with oil revenue, they might want to reflect on how similar oil revenue is to the snow: although both are in extreme abundance right now, both are volatile and unpredictable and will melt away sooner than later.…
State Rundown 3/6: March Tax Debates Contain Sanity Amid Usual Madness
• By ITEP Staff
State policymakers around the nation this week served up a handful of harmful and upside-down tax proposals, but these were refreshingly outnumbered by sound tax and budget policy proposals in several other states. NEW JERSEY Gov. Phil Murphy made tax fairness an explicit priority in his budget address, the NEW MEXICO House passed progressive reforms to improve the state’s schools and tax code, states such as VERMONT are looking to raise funds from legalized cannabis…
Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
There is significant room for improvement in state and local tax codes. State tax codes are filled with top-heavy exemptions and deductions and often fail to tax higher incomes at higher rates. States and localities have come to rely too heavily on regressive sales taxes that fail to reflect the modern economy. And overall tax collections are often inadequate in the short-run and unsustainable in the long-run. These types of shortcomings provide compelling reason to…
State Rundown 2/27: Temperatures and Tax Fights Continue to Polarize
• By ITEP Staff
As another polar vortex heads for large swaths of the country, state tax debates this week were highly polarized in another way. Lawmakers and advocates in MICHIGAN, OHIO, OREGON, UTAH, and elsewhere fought to enact or improve state Earned Income Tax Credits to give a boost to low- and middle-income working families. But the opposite extreme was heavily represented as well, as others pushed for regressive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, including in…
State Rundown 2/20: February and Regressive Tax Cuts, The “Meanest Moons of Winter”
• By ITEP Staff
Tom Robbins called February “the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.” Observers of state fiscal debates might think he was writing about similarly tiresome regressive tax cut proposals, which recently succeeded in Arkansas and advanced in North Dakota despite…
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: Consumption Taxes: the Good, Bad and the Ugly
• By ITEP Staff
Consumption taxes are a significant source of state and local revenue, and we expect that lawmakers will continue to adjust state consumption tax levies to adapt to budget needs and a changing economy.
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: Raising Revenue and Spending Surpluses to Prioritize Critical Public Investments
• By Lisa Christensen Gee
A second notable trend in 2019 is states raising revenue to address longstanding needs and states allocating their surpluses to invest in critical public priorities such as early childhood programs, education and other human services.
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: The Use of Targeted Tax Breaks to Help Address Poverty and Inequality
• By Aidan Davis
Continuing to build upon the momentum of previous years, states are taking steps to create and improve targeted tax breaks meant to lift their most in-need state residents up and out of poverty. Most notably, a range of states are exploring ways to restore, enhance or create state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC). EITCs are an effective tool to help struggling families with low wages make ends meet and provide necessities for their children. The…
City Lab: The Airbnb Effect: It’s Not Just Rising Home Prices
February 4, 2019
And cities with less stringent Airbnb regulations might also be losing out on a lot of tax revenue. Traditional lodging entities (when combining city, state, and county taxes), are taxed at an average rate of 13 percent in the 150 largest cities. But Airbnb is treated differently in different jurisdictions, and is trusted to self-report […]
State Rundown 1/31: Governors and Teachers Dominate Headlines, Much More in Fine Print
• By ITEP Staff
Gubernatorial addresses and the prospect of teacher strikes continued to take center stage in state fiscal news this week, as governors of Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah gave speeches that all included significant tax proposals. Meanwhile, teachers walked out in Virginia, and many other states debated school funding increases to avoid similar results. State policymakers have many other debates on their hands as well, including what to do with online sales tax revenue, how to cut…
Taxing Cannabis
• By Carl Davis, Misha Hill, Richard Phillips
State policy toward cannabis is evolving rapidly. While much of the debate around legalization has rightly focused on potential health and criminal justice impacts, legalization also has revenue implications for state and local governments that choose to regulate and tax cannabis sales. This report describes the various options for structuring state and local taxes on cannabis and identifies approaches currently in use. It also undertakes an in-depth exploration of state cannabis tax revenue performance and…
A Simple Fix for a $17 Billion Loophole: How States Can Reclaim Revenue Lost to Tax Havens
• By Richard Phillips
Enacting Worldwide Combined Reporting or Complete Reporting in all states, this report calculates, would increase state tax revenue by $17.04 billion dollars. Of that total, $2.85 billion would be raised through domestic Combined Reporting improvements, and $14.19 billion would be raised by addressing offshore tax dodging (see Table 1). Enacting Combined Reporting and including known tax havens would result in $7.75 billion in annual tax revenue, $4.9 billion from income booked offshore.
How States Can Help Shut Down Tax Havens by Cracking Down on Profit Shifting
• By Richard Phillips
A core problem with our corporate income tax laws at the federal and state levels is that they allow companies to use accounting gimmicks to shift significant amounts of their profits into low or zero-tax jurisdictions. Federal lawmakers had an opportunity to address this with the 2017 tax law, but they failed to do so, and, in fact, the law may incentivize more offshore tax avoidance. State lawmakers, however, can buck the federal trend and…
State Rundown 1/10: States Should Resolve to Pursue Equitable Tax Options
• By ITEP Staff
This week we released a handy guide of policy options for Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems, and are pleased to report that many state lawmakers are promoting policies that are in line with our recommendations. For example, Puerto Rico lawmakers recently enacted a targeted EITC-like credit for working families, and leaders in Virginia and elsewhere are working toward similar improvements. Arkansas residents also saw their tax code improve as laws reducing regressive consumption…
Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
New and returning policymakers have a tremendous opportunity to improve their constituents’ lives and their states’ economies through tax policy. This report distills the findings of “Who Pays?” into policy recommendations that can serve as a guide to new lawmakers, advocates, and others seeking to improve their state’s tax codes. It explains the importance of favoring taxes on income and wealth over taxes on consumption, the value of certain targeted tax benefits for families living…
A New Quick-Start Guide to “Who Pays?”
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
For those looking to start improving on these inequitable tax systems today, we now also offer a helpful companion to “Who Pays?” called "Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems." This new report distills the findings of “Who Pays?” into a set of policy recommendations – from the foundational to the aspirational – that residents of every state can draw from and start work on now.
State Rundown 12/19: Time to Rest and Recharge for Big Year Ahead
• By ITEP Staff
With many people enjoying time off over the next couple weeks, and the longest nights of the year coming over the weekend, now is a good time to get plenty of rest and relaxation in advance of what is likely to be a very busy 2019 for state fiscal policy and other debates. Among those debates, Kentucky lawmakers will be returning to topics they could not resolve in a brief special session held this week,…
Georgia Budget & Policy Institute: Increase the State Tobacco Tax for Healthier Georgia
• By ITEP Staff
Georgia could raise more than $400 million a year to make critical investments for the health and well-being of Georgia residents by raising the cigarette tax by at least $1 per pack. Georgia has the third-lowest state cigarette tax rate out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. At 37 cents per pack, it falls far below the national average of $1.72. Over the past decade, many states have increased tobacco tax rates…
State Rundown 11/16: Election Results Clarify Agendas as Real Work Begins
• By ITEP Staff
State policymakers, voters, and observers have been reflecting on this year’s campaigns and looking ahead to how the policy opportunities in their states have shifted as a result. For example, Arkansas’s governor sees a fresh chance to slash income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, while the governor-elect of Illinois will be doing just the opposite, launching into a promised effort to shore up the state’s budget by asking the wealthy to pay more. New…
Amazon HQ2 Finalists Should Disclose the Financial Incentives They Promised
• By Guest Blogger
The Crystal City and Long Island City subsidy offers are among the many Amazon HQ2 bids that remain completely hidden. Citizens have no idea what their elected officials have promised to a company headed by the richest person on earth.
Christian Science Monitor: A New Candidate Class: Schoolteachers Running For Office
October 22, 2018
North Carolina, one of six states where teachers held strikes before school let out last spring, “is an example of how lawmakers have prioritized tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy over public services,” says Meg Wiehe, deputy director of the Washington, DC-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and a North Carolina resident. “The big tax-cutting spree started here in 2013, and they’ve continued cutting.”
FOX13 SLC: Middle Income Utahns Bear Brunt of State and Local Tax Burden
• By ITEP Staff
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a report showing how every state and the District of Columbia use tax policy in regressive and progressive ways. Their conclusion: all but five states and the District of Columbia have regressive systems, meaning they favor the wealthy over middle and/or low-income earners.
