
October 1, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
State and local officials are staying very busy by considering a dizzying amount of reversals.
September 25, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
The IRS's capacity to prevent big multinational corporations from avoiding income taxes is facing a generational crisis.
September 18, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
Some states are trying to avoid revenue loss while others are welcoming it and doubling down.
September 11, 2025 • By Neva Butkus
Nearly two-thirds of states now have an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Momentum continues to build on these credits that boost low-paid workers’ incomes and offset some of the taxes they pay, helping lower-income families achieve greater economic security.
September 11, 2025 • By Neva Butkus
Child Tax Credits (CTCs) are effective tools to bolster the economic security of low- and middle-income families and position the next generation for success.
August 21, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
Trump's megabill directs most benefits to the wealthy, while leaving younger generations with higher taxes, more debt, and fewer opportunities. For Millennials and Gen Z, it means reduced public investment and an economy less likely to work in their favor.
August 21, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
The new tax law enacted last month found a temporary compromise on the level of the cap, boosting it to $40,000 through 2029, but failed to fix a loophole that allows some rich taxpayers with good accountants to completely avoid the cap
August 21, 2025 • By Kamolika Das
Tax policies just really don’t drive relocation decisions, they’ve been claiming this for a long time, and there’s just very scant evidence to support it.
August 20, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
While tax news has slowed as summer comes to an end, there are rumblings beneath the surface that could be an inauspicious sign of the times ahead for states and state budgets.
August 14, 2025
In New York City, we can point to the boldface success of Zohran Mamdani as an example. Recently nominated as the Democratic mayoral candidate, his affordability push focuses on creating better options for the working and middle class, such as a network of city-owned grocery stores that reduce the cost of food and affordable housing—all of which led to his big success with the city’s voters. Whatever one makes of his candidacy, it would seem that “the economy, stupid” is still voters’ most pressing concern.
August 13, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
The Trump megabill hands the richest 1% a trillion-dollar windfall while gutting funding for health care, education, and disaster relief — leaving communities to pick up the pieces. State and local leaders must step up, tax the wealthiest fairly, and safeguard the essentials that keep America healthy, educated, and safe.
July 28, 2025 • By Aidan Davis, Neva Butkus, Marco Guzman
Federal policy choices on tariffs, taxes, and spending cuts will be deeply felt by all states, which will have less money available to fund key priorities. This year some states raised revenue to ensure that their coffers were well-funded, some proceeded with warranted caution, and many others passed large regressive tax cuts that pile on to the massive tax cuts the wealthiest just received under the federal megabill.
Refundable tax credits were a big part of state tax policy conversations this year. In 2025, nine states improved or created Child Tax Credits or Earned Income Tax Credits.
July 24, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
All eyes in statehouses in recent weeks have been on federal budget negotiations, and now that the “megabill” has passed, they are focused in on their own budgets in search of ways to cope with the enormous consequences coming their way. All states will see fewer federal dollars flowing through their coffers, higher needs due […]
July 22, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff, Michael Ettlinger, Carl Davis, Jon Whiten
The megabill will raise taxes on the poorest 40 percent of Americans, barely cut them for the middle 20 percent, and cut them tremendously for the wealthiest Americans next year.
July 17, 2025 • By Miles Trinidad
Sales tax holidays are often marketed as relief for everyday families, but they do little to address the deeper inequities of regressive sales taxes. In 2025, 18 states offer these holidays at a collective cost of $1.3 billion.
July 15, 2025 • By Rita Jefferson
Across-the-board property tax cuts create less fair local tax systems in the long run. State legislators and local governments should prioritize the residents who can least afford their property taxes, not the residents and businesses who can.
July 14, 2025 • By Michael Ettlinger
If instead of giving $117 billion to the richest 1 percent, that money had been evenly divided among all Americans, we'd each get $343 - or nearly $1,400 for a family of four.
July 14, 2025
Taxing the rich has worked before. In the World War II era, the wealthiest Americans endured a top tax rate above 90% to buoy the economy. But would it work now?
July 7, 2025
The ink is not even dry on the far-reaching domestic policy law that President Trump signed on Friday, and already state governments are bracing for impact as Washington shifts much of the burden for health care, food assistance and other programs onto them.
July 7, 2025
The plan, part of the Republican domestic policy bill, includes all but the wealthiest families. But states must opt in, which could limit its reach.
July 7, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff, Carl Davis, Joe Hughes, Jessica Vela
President Trump has signed into law the tax and spending “megabill” that largely favors the richest taxpayers and provides working-class Americans with relatively small tax cuts that will in many cases be more than offset by Trump's tariffs.
The endlessly debated cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) has emerged in the GOP megabill largely unscathed—despite the efforts of Republican lawmakers from “blue” states. Those lawmakers are correct that the cap reduces the bill’s tax cuts for their wealthy constituents more than for those in other states. The megabill, however, is so loaded up with other provisions that result in a dramatic tax cut for the richest 1 percent in every state.
As federal aid ends and economic uncertainty grows, local governments face tough budget choices. Now is the time for localities to protect vulnerable residents and build stronger, more equitable fiscal foundations.
June 30, 2025 • By Michael Ettlinger
The predominant feature of the tax and spending bill working its way through Congress is a massive tax cut for the richest 1 percent — a $114 billion benefit to the wealthiest people in the country in 2026 alone.