North Carolina
Higher Education Income Tax Deductions and Credits in the States
March 22, 2016 • By Carl Davis
Read full report in PDF Download detailed appendix with state-by-state information on deductions and credits (Excel) Every state levying a personal income tax offers at least one deduction or credit designed to defray the cost of higher education. In theory, these policies help families cope with rising tuition prices by incentivizing college savings or partially […]
NewsNet5: PolitiFact: Was Kasich’s tax cut the largest in the nation?
March 16, 2016
“Ohio is among the states that come up in discussions about big tax cuts. But was Kasich’s truly the largest in the nation? “There are at least half a dozen reasons why there has to be an asterisk after that sentence,” said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a […]
North Carolina Tax and Justice Center: Prosperity Watch Issue 58, No. 3: State EITC allows working North Carolinians keep more of what they earn, boosts economy
February 17, 2016
Low- and middle-income taxpayers in North Carolina pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthiest taxpayers in the state. This inequity in North Carolina’s tax code makes it difficult for working families to make ends meet and further challenges the state’s ability to invest in communities and […]
Fayetteville Observer: Live Wire: Reports indicate undocumented immigrants pay lots of taxes
January 12, 2016
“In the public debates over federal immigration reform, sufficient and accurate information about the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants is often lacking, said an April 2 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, D.C. “The reality is the 11.4million undocumented immigrants living in the United States pay billions of dollars in […]
North Carolina Tax and Budget Center: BTC REPORTS: Doubling Down on a Losing Strategy – More Income Tax Cuts Will Grow Budget Shortfalls, Not the Economy
October 21, 2015
North Carolina policymakers have proposed another round of income tax cuts on top of those they passed in 2013. Senate Bill 526 would cost at least $1.4 billion by 2017, causing a new wave of cuts to services North Carolinians rely on each day and compounding the problems created by the tax cuts passed two […]
North Carolina Budget and Tax Center: FACTSHEET: Keep Arbitrary Tax & Spending Limits Out of North Carolina – Vote No on Senate Bill 607
October 21, 2015
A suite of severe changes to the state constitution laid out in Senate Bill 607 would undermine the foundations of the North Carolina economy and make our current challenges much worse. The bill changes the state constitution in three ways: 1. Limits spending on education, health, and other services through a rigid, arbitrary, and fundamentally […]
North Carolina Budget and Tax Center: BTC REPORTS: Diminished Expectations and the Resulting Drag on NC’s Economy – A Summary of the 2015-17 Budget
October 21, 2015
The budget North Carolina will live under through June of 2017 will sharply constrain the state’s ability to make public investments crucial to promoting widespread prosperity and a growing economy. Read the full report here
Camel City Dispatch: 3rd Shift… Suffer the Little Children… Busting the Budget in this Age of Swine
October 5, 2015
““Middle- and low-income wage earners won’t see a meaningful boost from the tax cuts. But they will feel the bite of an expanded sales tax that applies to the cost of auto and household repairs. And they’ll see a state in decline, its public schools strapped, its public employees stiffed for yet another year and […]
The Chronicle: Editorial: Investment not shown in state budget
October 2, 2015
“Meg Wiehe, state tax policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advocates tax fairness, says North Carolina is virtually alone in the nation in giving away the fruits of recovery. “It’s very counter to what we’ve seen in other states where revenue has come back and states […]
Citizen-Times: Legislature revs up tax on car repair, other services
September 28, 2015
“Here are figures from the N.C. Justice Center’s Budget and Tax Center summarizing the way tax changes in the new state budget bill will affect people at different levels of income. They are derived from a database of information on North Carolina taxpayers maintained by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. The figures […]
The News & Observer: An NC budget that chooses decline over investment
September 21, 2015
“Middle- and low-income wage earners won’t see a meaningful boost from the tax cuts. But they will feel the bite of an expanded sales tax that applies to the cost of auto and household repairs. And they’ll see a state in decline, its public schools strapped, its public employees stiffed for yet another year […]
News and Observer: An NC budget that chooses decline over investment
September 19, 2015
It is too generous to call the new state budget a spending plan. It is a spending reaction. Leaders should have a plan, a goal. This is a budget drawn by ideologues who blinked. Much of what is laid out in the $21.7 billion budget is determined by mandatory responses to growth in education and […]
WUNC: Under New Tax Plan, Timing Belt Change Would Cost $30 More On This Volkswagen Jetta
September 18, 2015
“Sen. Josh Stein, a Democrat from Wake County, disagrees. He says the plan would favor high-wage earners because everyone pays the same income tax—instead of lower rates for people who make less money, as was the case in previous North Carolina tax models—and new consumer service taxes take up a bigger proportion of the […]
The U.S. Census Bureau released data in September showing that the share of Americans living in poverty remains high. In 2014, the national poverty rate was 14.8 percent - statistically unchanged from the previous year. However, the poverty rate remains 2.3 percentage points higher than it was in 2007, before the Great Recession, indicating that recent economic gains have not yet reached all households and that there is much room for improvement. The 2014 measure translates to more than 46.7 million - more than 1 in 7 - Americans living in poverty. Most state poverty rates also held steady between…
News and Observer: Unfair ‘Bill of Rights’
August 26, 2015
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “The personal income tax can be – and usually is – the fairest of the main revenue sources relied on by state and local governments. When properly structured, it insures that wealthier taxpayers pay their fair share, provides lower rates on middle-income families, completely exempts the […]
Slate: Don’t Fall for Back-to-School Tax Holidays
August 14, 2015
If shoppers are simply shifting their spending to save on taxes, that means the states are losing revenue. That’s certainly the position of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that estimates the popular break will cost the states offering it $300 million this year. “Revenues lost through sales tax holidays […]
News and Observer: Problems with NC Legislation to Cap Taxes, Reduce Spending
August 13, 2015
Colorado has struggled with its TABOR, with declines in the percentage it has spent on education, including secondary and elementary schools, and on higher education. Colorado declined from 35th to 49th in the country in higher education funding as a share of personal income, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more […]
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Back to School Goods are Tax-Free This Weekend in Georgia
July 31, 2015
Another critic of sales tax holidays is Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a non-profit, non-partisan research organization with offices in Washington D.C., North Carolina and Wisconsin. “These holidays aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” said Gardner. Sales taxes make up about half of all states’ income, […]
NBC: Sales Tax Holidays Complex, Controversial, But Popular With Shoppers
July 28, 2015
Research by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy contends that increased sales during the tax holidays “have been shown to be primarily the result of consumers’ shifting the timing of their planned purchases.” That organization estimates sales tax holidays will cost states $300 million in 2015. “A two- to three-day sales tax holiday […]
CNBC: Tax-Free Shopping Ahead for These States
July 24, 2015
Research by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, however, contends that increased sales during the tax holidays “have been shown to be primarily the result of consumers’ shifting the timing of their planned purchases.” That organization estimates sales tax holidays will cost states $300 million in 2015. “A two- to three-day sales tax […]
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
July 22, 2015 • By Lisa Christensen Gee
Lawmakers in many states have enacted "sales tax holidays" (at least 17 states will hold them in 2015), to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, computers and other items. While these holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, their benefits are minimal. This policy brief examines the many problems associated with sales tax holidays and concludes that they have more political than policy benefits.
CNBC: Is Your State a Gas Tax Winner–Or Loser?
July 22, 2015
As states from Connecticut to California scramble to find money to fix crumbling highways, Congress once again is expected this week to put a short-term patch on the nearly insolvent federal highway trust fund. To make up the shortfall, Congress has transferred more than $53 billion from other tax revenue over the past five years, […]
Herald Sun: Letter to the Editor
July 20, 2015
Let’s step aside from heated immigration debate for a moment and pragmatically deconstruct the merits of House Bill 328. The “Highway Safety/Citizens Protection Act” provides an avenue for undocumented immigrants with non-criminal backgrounds to obtain state-issued driver’s licenses. Opponents argue this legislation incentivizes illegal immigration, which could further deplete already sparse state resources. The Institute […]
TI News Daily: Some States Prefer Transportation Over Tax relief
July 8, 2015
To meet infrastructure needs, several states have had to increase other taxes, such as gasoline taxes. These states include Idaho, Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Kentucky, Utah and South Dakota. Four of these states are currently finalizing infrastructure funding increases or are still discussing infrastructure funding raises. “A lot of states realized they couldn’t put […]
Planetizen: State Gas Tax Changes Effective July 1: Six Up; One Down
July 6, 2015
Carl Davis, Research Director of the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy (ITEP) writes where gas taxes used to fund transportation infrastructure increased, if only by decimal points, and about the aberration—the six-cent plunge in California. “The largest gas tax increases are taking place in Idaho (7 cents per gallon) and Georgia (6.7 cents for […]
