Select Media Mentions
Wall Street Journal: States Help Business Owners Save Billions in Federal Taxes
June 2, 2022
“That’s logical from any individual state’s perspective, but in the big national scheme of things, it’s hard to see how this is a good thing,” said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive group. Read more
Bloomberg: Some States Are Offering Sales Tax Holidays for Shoppers in 2022
June 2, 2022
Last year, sales tax holidays cost states and local governments more than $550 million in lost revenue—that’s according to an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) survey of cost estimates from state tax expenditure reports, fiscal notes, revenue departments, and academic studies. Those numbers are up from an estimated $300 million in 2020. Read […]
The New York Times: State Lawmakers, Step Up and Govern
May 17, 2022
Below is an excerpt of a letter to the editor by Aidan Davis: The overarching theme that ties most of them together is that they are a default reaction among leaders who lack an ambitious, positive vision for the role of government. Read more
The Hill: Biden, Bezos Feud Escalates
May 17, 2022
Between 2014 and 2018, Bezos reported $4.22 billion income and paid $973 million in taxes. In that period, the Amazon founder and then-CEO’s wealth grew by $99 billion, according to the report. “I think he doesn’t want the public talking about the fact that wealthy people should pay taxes on their earnings, just like middle-class […]
MarketWatch: Jeff Bezos accuses Biden of ‘misdirection’ over inflation causes and solutions
May 16, 2022
A report earlier this year said Amazon avoided paying about $5.2 billion in corporate income taxes in 2021 as it reported record profits. The report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Amazon paid about $2.1 billion in federal taxes, an effective tax rate of about 6%. Read more
CNN: Fact-checking the Biden vs. Rick Scott argument over Scott’s tax proposal
May 10, 2022
Another analysis, from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank, tested a different hypothetical policy that would satisfy Scott’s proposal to have all Americans pay some income tax. Under that policy, the institute found that the poorest fifth of Americans would face an average tax hike of just over $1,000. Read more
Washington Post: Corporate America takes first battle over future of Trump tax cuts
May 10, 2022
“That’s a fair trade,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, a left-leaning group that has along with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy voiced opposition to the incentive being restored. “It’s a deal, whereas this is not a deal.” Read more
The Center Square: States That Legalized Marijuana Are Bringing in More Tax Revenue on Marijuana Sales than Alcoho
May 10, 2022
A majority of the states that legalized recreational marijuana for recreational use are collecting more tax revenue from pot sales than alcohol sales. The first two states to legalize pot are profiting the most, Colorado and Washington. Across the country, the total revenue for taxes on weed amounted to nearly $3 billion, according to a report on […]
Politico: Checking for research opposition
May 9, 2022
The progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy followed up with a post shortly thereafter, calling it an “incredible reversal” that Democrats would consider a net corporate tax cut in the competitiveness measure after pushing so far unsuccessfully for a broader measure to hike taxes on the rich and corporations. Read more
Salon: Taking the Amazon union battle to the C-suite
May 7, 2022
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy recently reported that Amazon “avoided” about $5.2 billion in corporate federal income taxes in 2021 while reporting record profits of more than $35 billion (75% higher than its 2020 record haul) and “paid just 6 percent of those profits in federal corporate income taxes.” According to the nonprofit, […]
The Hill: Pot taxes surpass those from alcohol in legalization states
April 27, 2022
The report, from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, found the 11 states where marijuana is legal pulled in just shy of $3 billion in excise taxes on pot in 2021, compared with about $2.5 billion they made on alcohol excise taxes or liquor store profits. “This is still a small part of state […]
Bloomberg: Musk’s Untaxed Wealth Opens a Path to Twitter, Riling Democrats
April 27, 2022
“If you look at Musk’s ‘income’ as defined by our tax code, you see that the guy is really rich, but not rich enough to buy Twitter,” Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said. “When you look at a more complete definition of his […]
Yahoo! Finance: Pot Taxes Giving Some States a Revenue High
April 25, 2022
Taxes on the sale of marijuana are now producing more revenue than taxes on alcohol in the 11 states that legalized commerce in the drug, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Marijuana taxes in those states grew by a third to nearly $3 billion in 2021, ITEP found, while […]
Forbes: Will Working From Home Cripple City Budgets?
April 24, 2022
As if COVID-19 hasn’t been hard enough on cities, a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) raises another worry—lost tax revenues from a weak office sector. Linking data on offices with employment information (especially on working from home), ITEP worries many cities will face declining revenues. Read more
McClatchy: A Republican senator has a plan to ‘Rescue America.’ Here’s what it could cost Californians
April 19, 2022
But it’s the lowest wage earners who would pay more taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center reached the same conclusion. The ITEP’s estimate of the impact on Californians: ▪ Lowest 20% of income earners, making $26,100 or less, a tax increase of $790. ▪ Second 20%, […]
MarketPlace: Millions of college students are eligible for tax credits. But they have to file for them
April 15, 2022
“They’re sensibly designed to make college more attainable, to make it so that students don’t have to live in poverty just to pay for their college expenses,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more
CNBC: How companies like Amazon, Nike and FedEx avoid paying federal taxes
April 14, 2022
The current United States tax code allows some of the biggest company names in the country to not pay any federal corporate income tax. In fact, at least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes on their 2020 profits, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The […]
CSPAN Washington Journal: Biden Tax Proposals
April 12, 2022
ITEP Senior Fellow Matthew Gardner appeared on CSpan’s Washington Journal on Tuesday, April 12, 2022, to discuss President Biden’s tax proposals.
Quartz: What’s in store for empty downtown office buildings?
April 12, 2022
Even as business districts start to recover, Gallup estimates that 37% of current office space in the US is likely to be abandoned as workers switch to remote work. That could slash cities’ tax revenue and economic activity. A study of eight cities from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that lost tax […]
Wall Street Journal: Raise Residential Taxes? Bring in Casinos? Cities Look at Ways to Bolster Budgets
April 11, 2022
“Though magnitudes vary somewhat across cities, all face significant fiscal risks,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said in a November report that looked at the impact of remote working on property tax collections in eight cities.The report projected that prices for commercial real estate on average will fall […]
Wall Street Journal: Cities Look at Ways to Bolster Budgets
April 11, 2022
“Though magnitudes vary somewhat across cities, all face significant fiscal risks,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said in a November report that looked at the impact of remote working on property tax collections in eight cities.The report projected that prices for commercial real estate on average will fall […]
Washington Post: Want to really fix Virginia’s standard deduction? Index it.
April 6, 2022
On that topic, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy wrote: Any feature of an income tax that is based on a fixed dollar amount will be vulnerable to inflationary effects. In many states, this means that tax breaks designed to provide low-income tax relief — including exemptions, standard deductions, and most tax credits — […]
Fox News: Rep. Ro Khanna concerned student loan debt could be a hurdle to raising children, buying homes
April 6, 2022
“How is it that some corporations are paying zero percent tax?” Khanna said. “We can make sure that people who are very, very wealthy are paying at least 20%. That is what teachers and firefighters pay.” At least 55 corporations didn’t pay any federal income tax in 2020, according to a study conducted by the […]
The Nation: Biden’s Billionaire Tax Is Smart Politics for the Midterms
March 31, 2022
Right now, über-billionaire Elon Musk enjoys a tax rate of 3.27 percent, while Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pays 0.98 percent, according to a 2021 ProPublicareport. Getting them to pay 20 percent would be an epic accomplishment, which is what makes the president’s initiative a big deal. Indeed, as Amy Hanauer of the Institute on Taxation and […]
Bloomberg: Did You Pay Your ‘Fair Share’ of Federal Income Tax This Year?
March 31, 2022
And according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the impact would have a definite geographic tilt. The states where more than 40% of residents would face tax increases are largely in the South, including Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Florida. read more
Members of the media rely on ITEP for analysis and insight about how tax policies affect people. If you’re a reporter looking to talk to one of our experts, contact Jon Whiten at [email protected].
Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
Subscribe to ITEP Emails
Tax research and policy news in your inbox.
Promote Fair Tax Policy
Your gift to ITEP promotes tax justice. With your help, we do research that supports taxing millionaires and billionaires, taxing big corporations and raising revenue for the things our people, our communities and our planet need.
Together, we can create a country with more economic justice, more racial justice, more climate justice… and more tax justice.