Income Taxes

States continue to debate whether and how to link their state tax codes to the 2025 federal tax law. This is not just a technical debate.

Yesterday was Tax Day, and with many state legislative sessions wrapping, some tax changes are gearing up or crossing over the finish line.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Friday put her seal of approval on a supplemental budget bill that includes a “millionaires’ tax.” The new tax levies a 2 percent income tax surcharge on income over $1 million ($1.5 million for joint filers and heads of households), making Maine’s tax system fairer while raising revenue to support […]

Tax cuts are looming large on the horizon in North Carolina. So large, in fact, that even some traditionally anti-tax voices are starting to get nervous.

State legislative sessions are wrapping up, and final tax and budget packages are making their way to governors’ desks.

In Washington, Gov. Bob Ferguson and lawmakers decided to stop fooling around with one of the nation’s most upside-down tax codes and finally brought to life a new millionaires’ tax, the first new income tax created in a state since 1991.

South Carolina signed into law a regressive tax cut that will disproportionately benefit the state’s highest-income residents while simultaneously jeopardizing the state’s ability to pay for basic public services in the years to come.

This week, troubling revenue projections are making headlines, with many lawmakers scrambling to determine how the tax changes at the federal level, plus price hikes driven by national policy decisions, will impact their states.

The war is widely unpopular. Whether the cost of the war ends up being $200 billion, more than that amount, or less, let’s at least have it paid for by those who can most afford it.

A proposal to replace the Missouri personal income tax with a higher sales tax would increase costs for low- and middle-income households while giving the richest Missourians an average annual tax cut of almost $40,000.

As states lawmakers continue to weigh their linkages to the federal tax code in light of the recent federal tax law, New Mexico provides a blueprint for limiting multinational corporate tax avoidance.

Washington is on its way to making history after the legislature approved the “millionaires’ tax,” a 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million. The bill, which is expected to raise more than $3 billion a year, making significant investments in public education and childcare, will also expand the Working Families Tax Credit – the […]

Sen. Chris Van Hollen has recently introduced the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, which offers a generous middle-class tax cut paid for with a new tax on millionaires.

The Washington legislature has approved a new "millionaires' tax," a 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million. The bill, which makes significant investments in public education and child care, will also expand the Working Families Tax Credit – the state’s EITC – to reach an additional 460,000 households.

As many state legislative sessions near or cross the halfway point, lawmakers are facing tough choices.

National Sausage Month isn’t until October, but now is the time of year when state lawmakers are really diving into their sausage-making processes, as separate legislative houses and oftentimes political parties send competing bills, budgets, and visions back and forth to grind out their differences.

State lawmakers are grappling with a range of challenges as their fiscal outlooks deteriorate, federal tax enforcement wanes (after the Trump administration cut the IRS workforce by 25 percent), and a rewritten federal tax code sends states scrambling to decide what changes they might want to make in their own codes.

While some may be excited for a romantic Valentine’s Day this weekend, many state lawmakers are breaking up and decoupling from recent federal tax changes that are poised to leave states with revenue shortfalls – much like a bad date who forgets their wallet and asks you to pick up the tab.

The results are a mixed bag, with some states enacting promising policies that will improve tax equity and others going in the opposite direction.

Four of the corporations whose CEOs flanked President Trump at his 2025 inauguration ceremony have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Despite wintry conditions across much of the country, that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from debating major tax policy changes.

The company paid an effective federal income tax rate of just over 3.5% in 2025, the lowest it has recorded since the company went public as Facebook in 2012.

The Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisors suggests that states consider drastically raising sales taxes and using those new revenues to pay for repealing taxes on corporate and personal income. Working-class families would face dramatic tax increases while the nation’s wealthiest families would see their state tax bills plummet.

As state legislative sessions ramp up across the country, property taxes are one of many issues dominating tax policy conversations in statehouses.

Most states are adopting a very cautious approach so far this year as legislators begin their sessions and governors make their annual addresses, thanks to ongoing economic uncertainty and federal retrenchment.