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Teachers in North Carolina and South Carolina are walking out and rallying this week for increased education funding, teacher and staff pay, and other improvements to benefit students—if you’re unsure why be sure to check out research on the teacher shortage and pay gap under “What We’re Reading” below. Meanwhile, budget debates have recently wrapped up in Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington. And major tax debates are kicking into high gear in both Louisiana and Nebraska.

In early April, a diverse but mostly black crowd took to the streets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. to protest T-Mobile’s decision to order Metro PCS to cease playing gogo music. This tale is a shining example of why economic investment—especially taxpayer-incentivized investment—in underserved communities is fraught with controversy. Who ultimately benefits after developers pour millions of dollars into these communities? And, as this controversy reveals, are the usually black and brown denizens of these neighborhoods and businesses that may have catered to them no longer welcome once economic development reaches a critical mass?

As of 2017, 11.5 million children in the United States were living in poverty. A national, fully-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) would effectively address persistently high child poverty rates at the national and state levels. The federal CTC in its current form falls short of achieving this goal due to its earnings requirement and lack of full refundability. Fortunately, states have options to make state-level improvements in the absence of federal policy change. A state-level CTC is a tool that states can employ to remedy inequalities created by the current structure of the federal CTC. State-level CTCs would significantly reduce…

Transportation funding was a hot topic this week, as OHIO lawmakers responsibly voted to update their gas tax and offset some of its impact on lower-income families with an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) boost, while NEW YORK enacted the nation’s first “congestion pricing” charge, and LOUISIANA and VIRGINIA leaders looked at gas tax updates as well—a trend ITEP’s Carl Davis explored in depth today here. Broad tax packages are also being hashed out in LOUISIANA, NEBRASKA, OREGON, and TEXAS. And MARYLAND became the sixth state with a $15 minimum wage on the horizon.

Though a long winter and a rough start to spring weather have wreaked havoc in much of the country, lawmakers are off to a good start in the world of state fiscal policy so far. In the last week, a progressive revenue package was passed in the nick of time in NEW MEXICO, a service-sapping tax cut was vetoed in KANSAS, and a regressive and unsustainable tax shift was soundly defeated in NORTH DAKOTA. Meanwhile, gas tax updates are on the table in MAINE, MINNESOTA, and OHIO. And exemptions for feminine hygiene products and diapers were enacted in VIRGINIA and introduced in MISSOURI. 

More than three billion dollars could be raised under a major progressive tax plan proposed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker this week, the point being to simultaneously improve the state’s upside-down tax code and address its notorious budget gap issues. One state, Utah, may already be looking at a special session to revisit the sales tax reform debate that ended this week without resolution, in contrast to Alabama and Arkansas, where leaders finally resolved years-long debates over gas taxes and infrastructure funding. And lawmakers in four states – California, Florida, Minnesota, and North Carolina – introduced legislation to expand or…

There is significant room for improvement in state and local tax codes. State tax codes are filled with top-heavy exemptions and deductions and often fail to tax higher incomes at higher rates. States and localities have come to rely too heavily on regressive sales taxes that fail to reflect the modern economy. And overall tax collections are often inadequate in the short-run and unsustainable in the long-run. These types of shortcomings provide compelling reason to pursue state and local tax reforms to make these systems more equitable, adequate, and sustainable.

Tom Robbins called February “the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.” Observers of state fiscal debates might think he was writing about similarly tiresome regressive tax cut proposals, which recently succeeded in Arkansas and advanced in North Dakota despite improved public understanding of the upside-down nature state tax systems, ineffectiveness of supply-side trickle-down tax cuts, and importance of investing in education. But like February…