Select Media Mentions
Money: VP Debate: Where Kamala Harris Stands on Taxes, Health Care and Stimulus Checks
October 7, 2020
“The CARES Act gave Americans an important one-time payment, but it’s clear that wasn’t nearly enough to meet the needs of this historic crisis,” Harris said in a statement. But critics say the law would cost too much. A month of payments under the bill would dole out nearly $600 billion to households — more […]
Washington Post: How the Cares Act gave millions to energy companies with no strings attached
October 7, 2020
“The Cares Act tax provisions were too heavily tilted towards large businesses and away from at-risk individuals,” said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a Washington-based nonprofit organization. Read more
FAIR: Steve Wamhoff on Trump’s Taxes
October 3, 2020
We’ll talk about takeaways from Trump’s taxes with Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Listen
Forbes: The $750 Question: How Trump’s Taxes Reveal The Deep Unfairness Of The U.S. Tax Code
October 3, 2020
“There are certainly some tax advantages available to larger corporations that are practically unavailable to individuals. Most large businesses have full-time staff available to help negotiate the tax laws,” said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and a corporate tax expert who regularly studies Fortune 500 […]
Chicago Sun-Times: Illinois needs the Fair Tax for racial equity
October 2, 2020
An analysis by the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that, between 1999 and 2019, the state’s current flat rate income tax dramatically increased the racial wealth gap, transferring billions of dollars in tax liability from wealthy, mostly white taxpayers to African American and Latino families. The details reveal a stunning portrait of […]
In These Times: It’s Cheap to Be Rich
October 2, 2020
As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy explained: “The mechanisms Amazon has used to reduce its three-year federal income tax rate to zero between 2017 and 2019 are legal. Congress created them, Congress chose in the most recent round of ‘tax reform’ to leave them in place, and Congress currently appears to be entirely […]
Jacobin Magazine: Abraham Lincoln Taxed the Rich. This Election Day, Illinois Can, Too.
October 2, 2020
Illinois now boasts one of the most unfair tax systems in the country. According to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the state’s flat tax “amounts to a tax subsidy for the wealthiest Illinoisans that compounds income inequality and racial wealth gaps.” Read more
Newsweek: What VP Candidate Kamala Harris Has Said About a Second Stimulus Check
October 1, 2020
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy conducted an analysis of the plan, finding that its 10-month price tag could be at least $5.6 trillion—more than twice the amount of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act signed by President Donald Trump in March. The CARES Act provided the first round of stimulus checks […]
WGN NewsNation: President Trump calls income tax report ‘fake news,’ says he’s still under IRS audit
September 29, 2020
Matt Gardner is with the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. He spoke with NewsNation’s Dean Reynolds about the New York Times report. “This isn’t news that the president has avoided taxes,” Gardner said. “What’s new and really interesting to me about the latest report is that for the first time we have […]
Marketwatch: Trump’s 2017 tax bill was reportedly $750 — here’s how that stacks up against the average American’s taxes
September 29, 2020
That’s according to an analysis from Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy. (Wamhoff looked at income tax liabilities by adjusted gross income and divided the returns by the total liabilities to get the estimated tax bills. Read more
Bloomberg: Trump’s reported $750 federal income tax bill is smaller than the average payment by an American household making $20,000 a year
September 29, 2020
The data — drawn from the IRS — shows Trump’s tax payment is less compared to households earning between $20,000 and $25,000 each year. Around 9 million people filed tax returns in that group, said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank. Read more
Bloomberg: Profitable Losses, or How Trump Trimmed His Taxes: QuickTake
September 29, 2020
An article by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy on tax breaks for real-estate investors like Trump. Read more
Business Insider: I made $10,500 as a freelancer in 2018 — and still paid more taxes than Trump. The system is broken.
September 29, 2020
According to a 2019 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 60 companies, including Netflix, Chevron, and Eli Lilly, did not pay federal income taxes in 2018. “Instead of paying $US16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21% corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $US4.3 billion, […]
TRT World: Trump’s tax returns reveal a system that rewards all of America’s elite
September 29, 2020
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysed SEC filings of Fortune 500 companies and identified 60 major corporations that didn’t report any federal income tax expenses in 2019. Read more
Scoop: ‘The American People Should Be Pissed Off’: Critics Say Trump Tax Dodging Exposes System Rotten to the Core
September 29, 2020
Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a statement that the Times reporting does “not include Trump’s tax returns for 2018 and 2019, the first two years after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. The law opened new tax avoidance opportunities for wealthy […]
Washington Post: A pug, a cat and a baby have paid more in taxes than Trump reportedly has
September 29, 2020
Undocumented immigrants paid more than $11 billion in taxes in 2017, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That same year, Trump paid just $750, according to the New York Times story. Read more
CBS News: 7 takeaways from New York Times report on President Trump’s tax returns
September 29, 2020
At the same time Ivanka Trump was an executive officer of the Trump companies, she both profited from the hotels and the consulting fees, the Times story noted. The IRS in the past has pursued penalties against some companies that have sought to avoid taxes by paying consulting fees to people who weren’t, in fact, […]
Associated Press: Trump Went Even Further Than Other Uber-rich to Shrink Taxes
September 29, 2020
So say tax experts in the wake of a New York Times report Sunday that found that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in both 2016 and 2017 — and none at all in 11 of the 18 years that the newspaper examined. “The things that Trump did are typical of wealthy businesspeople and particularly […]
CBS News: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Trump for paying less in taxes than “waitresses and undocumented immigrants”
September 29, 2020
Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro joined Ocasio-Cortez’s criticism, citing a figure from the the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found undocumented immigrants pay nearly $12 billion in federal and state taxes a year. Read more
Orlando Sentinel: Trump’s tax strategy: Unfair or just good business?
September 29, 2020
Many large companies, including Amazon, General Motors and IBM, paid no taxes in 2018, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Something is wrong with the tax code, not the IRS. They can only collect what is owed under the law, so everyone with smarts is hiding under that law. Wake up, Congress, […]
Common Dreams: The American people should be angry’: Critics say Trump tax dodging exposes a system rotten to the core
September 29, 2020
Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a statement that the Times reporting does “not include Trump’s tax returns for 2018 and 2019, the first two years after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. The law opened new tax avoidance opportunities for wealthy […]
Washington Post: What Trump’s and Biden’s competing economic agendas reveal about the economy
September 28, 2020
Inequality also interacts with money and politics to block the very types of productive, equalizing spending that Biden proposes, while insisting on the nonproductive tax cuts that partially drive the Moody’s results. Consider, for example, that one of Trump’s few campaign proposals is to cut the tax on capital gains. According to the Institute on […]
Investopedia: How Fortune 500 Companies Avoid Paying Income Tax
September 28, 2020
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that over the eight-year period from 2008 to 2015, 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 21.2%—while the federal tax rate was 35% for all those years.1 Over that same period, 18 companies, including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com, and PG&E […]
Salon: Obamacare lawsuit heading to Supreme Court would slash taxes for top 0.1%
September 25, 2020
The lawsuit was filed after Senate Republicans unsuccessfully tried to repeal Obamacare despite campaigning on the issue for years. “Repealing ObamaCare has always been about tax cuts for the rich,” Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote in an op-ed during the repeal push. […]
Route 50: Why States and Localities Should Increase—Not Decrease—Spending
September 23, 2020
As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) wrote in an April report, “Even with more federal support, states will need home-grown revenue solutions in the short, medium and long terms as the crisis and its fiscal fallout intensify, subside, and eventually give way to a new normal.” 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].
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