Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Select Media Mentions

Yahoo Finance: The Economic Risk of Trump’s Deportation Plan

August 6, 2024

The surge of migrants entering the United States during part of Joe Biden’s presidency has played to Donald Trump’s signature issue. Trump launched his first campaign for president in 2015 with an anti-immigrant rant, and the issue has worked for him ever since. So Trump, in his third campaign for president, has raised his bid on the issue, promising the “mass deportation” of up to 20 million people if he wins a second term.

ProPublica: How a Washington Tax Break for Data Centers Snowballed Into One of the State’s Biggest Corporate Giveaways

August 5, 2024

In 2010, as the country still reeled from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, tech companies, real estate developers and rural lobbyists went to the state Capitol in Olympia, Washington, to press for a tax break for data centers.

Boston Globe: The Hidden Tax Power of Undocumented Immigrants

August 5, 2024

A common argument among anti-immigrant politicians and advocates is that noncitizens who are in the United States illegally exploit government benefits and constitute a financial burden on the country. That claim is largely inaccurate and misleading. The latest evidence was provided this week by policy analysts and researchers at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. They found that undocumented immigrants in the United States paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, averaging $8,889 per person.

USA Today: Report: Targeted for Deportation by Trump, Undocumented Immigrants Pay Billions in Taxes

August 1, 2024

Florida is among a half-dozen states which each collect more than $1 billion in taxes from undocumented immigrants – a flow of public money likely to disappear under Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, a new report shows.

Newsweek: Undocumented Immigrants’ Payments Into Social Security Detailed in Report

August 1, 2024

New analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that undocumented residents paid £25.7 billion into Social Security funds and $6 billion into Medicare in 2022; both programs that they are not entitled to use. In total, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion, or roughly $9,000 per person, in taxes in 2022.

Audio: ITEP’s Marco Guzman Talks About the Tax Payments of Connecticut’s Undocumented Immigrants

August 1, 2024

CT’s undocumented immigrants pay over $400 million in taxes annually, study finds. Read more or listen here.

Video: ITEP’s Marco Guzman Talks About the Tax Contributions of Virginia’s Undocumented Immigrants

August 1, 2024

Marco Guzman spoke with 13News Now. Watch the clip here.

Audio: ITEP’s Carl Davis Talks About the Tax Contributions of Utah’s Undocumented Immigrants

July 31, 2024

A new study describes states that the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants equate to almost $100 billion, both federally and statewide. Read more or listen here.

States Newsroom: Study Says Undocumented Immigrants Paid Almost $100 Billion in Taxes

July 31, 2024

A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022 while many are shut out of the programs their taxes fund. The findings run counter to anti-immigrant rhetoric that undocumented immigrants are “destroying” social programs. Read more.

Video: ITEP’s Marco Guzman on the Tax Contribution of Maine’s Undocumented Immigrants

July 31, 2024

A new national study is shedding light on the economic contributions made by undocumented immigrants in Maine and throughout the United States, WMTW-TV in Maine reports. Watch the clip or read the story here.

McClatchy DC: Undocumented Immigrants in California Are Paying Billions in Taxes. Here’s How Much.

July 30, 2024

Amid pledges for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants by presidential candidate Donald Trump, a new study has highlighted the increasingly positive economic effects of this community. The report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington-based progressive research group, found undocumented immigrants nationwide paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022. About $37.3 billion was spent on state and local taxes, and the rest went to federal taxes.

Bloomberg: Undocumented Immigrants in US Pay Nearly $100 Billion in Taxes

July 30, 2024

Undocumented immigrants paid almost $100 billion of taxes, underscoring the importance of border policies on the country’s tax collections, according to a new report. Read more.

USA Today: America’s Billionaires Are Worth a Record $6T. Where Does That Leave the Rest of Us?

July 19, 2024

America’s billionaires are now collectively worth a record $6 trillion. Their wealth has more than doubled since the passage of the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. Is that good news, or bad? It depends on whom you ask. Read more.

Quartz: ‘Trump Trade’ Is Back in Focus

July 16, 2024

The world’s financial markets are growing increasingly open to the likelihood that former President Donald Trump will make his way to a second term in the White House. All it took was outperforming President Joe Biden on a debate stage and surviving an assassination attempt.

Route 50: States, Cities Consider ‘Mansion Taxes’ to Fund Affordable Housing

July 15, 2024

States and cities have been throwing darts at the wall, trying to find dedicated funding to tackle affordable housing needs. Nationwide, tens of millions of families are struggling amid a housing shortage with rent and housing costs. Home prices are up about 60% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. And about a quarter of renters—some 12 million households—spend more than half their income on housing, which is far above the recommended 30%. To support affordable housing development and other initiatives in the rapidly growing Denver area, Mayor Mike Johnston on Monday unveiled a proposed new tax that would add 0.5%…

Nonprofit Quarterly: Can Taxes Reduce Inequality? What a Study of State and Local Taxes Tells Us

July 11, 2024

Who pays? Along with its companion question of “who benefits,” “who pays” has long been a central concern of both politics and economics. Earlier this year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) published Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, its seventh study on the topic since 1996 and its first since 2018.

The 19th News: Republicans Want to Kill the Dept. of Ed and Privatize Education. Billionaires Are Helping Them.

July 10, 2024

In the fall, the Department of Education will mark 45 years since its inception, but that anniversary could be its last if Donald Trump gets his way. The federal agency is one of several he’s vowed to slash if reelected president.

Education Week: A State Considers a Future in Which Schools Can’t Rely on Property Taxes

July 10, 2024

What would a world without property taxes look like? In every state, revenue from property taxes is one of the biggest sources of K-12 school funding. But that could change soon as efforts ramp up in a handful of states to abandon property taxes altogether, or at least as a funding source for schools.

Connecticut Mirror: Could CT Fight Homelessness With a ‘Mansion Tax’? Yes, Report Says

July 3, 2024

State government could raise as much as $180 million annually to combat homelessness or address other social needs by boosting its tax on the sale of high-value houses, according to a recent report from two Washington fiscal think tanks.

The Globalist: Will American Monetocracy Ever Come to an End?

July 3, 2024

It used to be that the United States prided itself on being a meritocracy. No more. It is increasingly a country with a cult of money and rule by moneyed elites. Not so much an oligarchy as a monetocracy.

New York Times: Newsom Uses Annual State Address to Confront Republicans Across the Nation

June 27, 2024

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, whose liberal state has been hammered by Republicans for months as a hellscape of homelessness, crime and high taxes, used his annual State of the State address on Tuesday to slam “conservatives and delusional California bashers” and defend “the California way of life.”

Sacramento Bee: Governor Gavin Newsom Claims California Is Not a ‘High-Tax State.’ Is He Correct?

June 26, 2024

“Here’s the truth Republicans never tell you: California is not a high tax state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Tuesday in his taped State of the State address.

Education Week: Some Districts Charge for School Bus Rides—If They Offer Transportation at All

June 26, 2024

A small but notable share of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts charge fees for some or all of their students to ride the bus each day—if they provide transportation at all. States vary on the degree to which they require schools to offer bus service to all students who want it. They also differ widely on how much money they provide to schools to cover the growing costs of transportation.

New York Times: Democrats’ Dream of a Wealth Tax Is Alive. For Now.

June 21, 2024

For years, liberal Democrats have agitated for the United States to tax wealth, not just income, as a way to ensure that rich Americans who derive wealth from real estate, stocks, bonds and other assets were paying more in taxes. On Thursday, that dream survived a Supreme Court scare, but just barely.

Forbes: Supreme Court Refuses to Upend the Tax Code in Ruling on Unrealized Gains

June 21, 2024

The Supreme Court declined to overturn a tax policy Thursday that critics warned could have had broad implications on federal tax policy and the U.S. economy, ruling against a couple who claimed they should not have been taxed on money they invested but hadn't made a profit on.

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].