September 1, 2017
U.S. companies with business overseas do keep some profits in offshore accounts, where it isn’t subject to U.S. corporate taxes until it is repatriated to this country. The profits are declared indefinitely, or permanently, reinvested, which means the companies say they will reinvest the money abroad. If a U.S. company does bring the money back to the […]
September 1, 2017
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s visit to the Boeing plant in Everett last week contained plenty of ideology, politicking, and lobbying for Republican efforts to reconfigure the U.S. tax code. But it was woefully short on facts — a situation that should play a role in the upcoming congressional discussion about how much American corporations pay […]
August 31, 2017
Earlier this year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, combed through the financial filings of 258 major U.S. corporations to see how much tax they reported paying. The result: more than two-thirds of the companies paid less than 20 percent of their profits in taxes, on average, between 2008 and […]
August 31, 2017
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy examined 258 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable from 2008 to 2015 and found 100 companies paid zero — or less — in federal income taxes for at least one year. Some companies like PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric Company) didn’t pay taxes at all. Plus, many received […]
August 31, 2017
Earlier this year, the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a report in which it analyzed the tax rates paid by members of the Fortune 500 between 2008 and 2015. The authors selected the 258 corporations that were profitable in all eight years to avoid dragging down the average with companies that paid […]
August 31, 2017
The arcane rules for taxing beverages point to a broader taxation challenge: Unless state legislatures and city officials target broad categories, all gasoline sales, for example, their efforts to tax individual items often get hung up over how to define what’s taxed, as well as how to weigh concerns from competing constituencies. And the politics […]
August 31, 2017
A proposal to encourage companies to repatriate the trillions of dollars that are resting offshore is also up for discussion between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, perhaps along the lines of the repatriation holiday offered by the Bush administration in 2004. Whether either of those changes would have a material impact on […]
August 31, 2017
Big multinational corporations commonly make use of the deferral loophole, which allows them to avoid taxes on profits made abroad. That exception creates incentives for corporations to use accounting gimmicks to shift profits made at home to overseas subsidiaries and to funnel money through foreign tax havens where they owe little to no tax. According […]
August 31, 2017
In fact, the evidence suggests that Trump’s tax cuts would line corporate CEOs’ pockets, while depleting the Treasury and doing little, if anything, to boost working class Americans’ bottom line.“Trump’s plan would double down on the anti-populist features of the current system,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the progressive Institute on Taxation and […]
August 31, 2017
The liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has been among those urging repeal of sales tax holidays. In Georgia, the liberal Georgia Budget and Policy Institute promoted repeal. In an interview with Governing magazine, Wesley Tharpe, research director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, appeared dismissive of the savings the holiday provided low-income […]
August 30, 2017
Following is an excerpt from a op-ed by Alan Essig, executive director of ITEP, published on Fortune. President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are eager to turn our attention to tax changes. This Wednesday, Trump will head to Missouri to promote the supply-side argument for tax cuts. But he doesn’t want us to […]
August 30, 2017
He didn’t provide any specifics about how these things might happen however. So far, the most detail that’s been offered about Trump’s tax reform plan is a one-page, less-than 250 word outline handed out at a White House press briefing in April. Using that and subsequent statements from administration officials as a guide, the Institute […]
August 30, 2017
The president spoke at an event at Loren Cook Co., which manufactures fans, blowers and lab exhaust systems. The company’s owner donated to Trump and to various Missouri GOP officials during the 2016 campaign cycle. We don’t know much yet about Trump’s plan for tax reform ― but based on the broad outlines released by the […]
August 30, 2017
A territorial tax system is still open to abuse: Although there may be benefits to changing the way foreign profits are taxed, there is no guarantee that tax dodging will be reduced. “It’s an endless cat-and-mouse game” that leaves countries racing to lower their business tax rates to zero, Matthew Gardner of the Institute on […]
August 30, 2017
But skeptics worry that making the system airtight is impossible. “It’s an endless cat-and-mouse game,” said Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group based in Washington. “What’s driving companies to engage in paper transactions is not our 35 percent tax rate,” he said, but other countries’ willingness […]
August 30, 2017
IPS used data from company filings — analyzed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning research organization — to make a list of publicly held firms that made a profit every year from 2008 to 2015 and that also paid less than 20 percent of their earnings in federal corporate income tax. Ninety-two companies fit that description, including […]
August 30, 2017
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, AT&T enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 8 percent between 2008 and 2015, despite recording a profit in the United States each year, by exploiting tax breaks and loopholes. (The company argues that it pays significant taxes, at a rate close to 34 percent in […]
August 30, 2017
The awe actually should be over Ryan’s selective use of facts. As Danny Westneat of The Seattle Times reported: “Not only is Boeing gushing cash, but its own financial documents show it has actually paid an average federal income tax of just 3.2 percent of profits over the past 15 years. That’s less than one-tenth […]
August 30, 2017
Third, the Illinois program specifies that donations to scholarship funds — up to $1,000 a year for an individual — are not eligible for the 75 percent state tax credit if the taxpayer also claims that donation as a charitable contribution for federal tax purposes. This provision eliminates the ability of donors in higher tax […]
August 30, 2017
A new study from the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., analyzes data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy to determine what companies that pay lower tax rates do with their extra earnings. Researchers looked at 92 publicly-held companies that reported a U.S. profit from 2008 to 2015 […]
August 28, 2017
A regionwide one-cent sales tax to fund Metro would have a disproportionate impact on poor families, taking five times the share of income from the bottom 20 percent of earners when compared with those in the top 1 percent, according to a new analysis from a trio of left-leaning think tanks representing the District, Maryland and Virginia.
August 25, 2017
The DACA program was implemented through an executive action by President Obama in 2012, and has since provided temporary relief from deportation to the young immigrant population. According to the PEW Research Center, more than 750,000 young unauthorized immigrants have received work permits and relief from deportation and in 2017 up to 512,000 unauthorized immigrants […]
August 25, 2017
House tax writers have been doing their part to drum up support over the recess, with Ryan stopping by Boeing on Thursday. Critics were quick to note that Boeing is hardly the poster child for a company weighed down by a high corporate tax rate. “GOP leaders tout corporate tax cuts at Boeing and AT&T, […]
August 25, 2017
“The question with Boeing isn’t whether high taxes are hurting them, because that’s ludicrous on the face of it,” says Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., outfit that tracks the taxes companies pay. “The question with Boeing is: How much lower could their taxes possibly […]
August 25, 2017
Critics have been lighting up the internet pointing out that Boeing isn’t the ideal poster child for corporate tax reform since it and many other major corporations don’t pay anything like a 35 percent tax rate. Matthew Gardner of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy points out that according to ITEP’s analysis, Boeing […]
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