Recent Work by ITEP
North Dakota Senate Should Put the Freeze on House Tax-Cut Plan
March 11, 2019 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
Lawmakers in Bismarck were treated last weekend to the largest single day of snowfall the city has ever seen. As state senators begin weighing a bill recently passed by the House that would replace the state's income taxes with oil revenue, they might want to reflect on how similar oil revenue is to the snow: although both are in extreme abundance right now, both are volatile and unpredictable and will melt away sooner than later. Lawmakers should also consider how eliminating the state's income taxes might warm the hearts of wealthier North Dakotans but would leave most North Dakota families…
State Rundown 3/6: March Tax Debates Contain Sanity Amid Usual Madness
March 6, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
State policymakers around the nation this week served up a handful of harmful and upside-down tax proposals, but these were refreshingly outnumbered by sound tax and budget policy proposals in several other states. NEW JERSEY Gov. Phil Murphy made tax fairness an explicit priority in his budget address, the NEW MEXICO House passed progressive reforms to improve the state’s schools and tax code, states such as VERMONT are looking to raise funds from legalized cannabis and put it to good use, and many states, including ALABAMA, ARKANSAS, OHIO, and WISCONSIN, are seriously considering much-needed gas tax updates to improve their…
The nation is currently engaging in serious discourse about how to expand economic opportunity and remedy income inequality via the federal tax code. State tax systems are also important and have a dismal effect on the growing economic divide. In a new report, Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes, we further parse our Who Pays? data.
Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
March 6, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
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.
State Rundown 2/27: Temperatures and Tax Fights Continue to Polarize
February 27, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
As another polar vortex heads for large swaths of the country, state tax debates this week were highly polarized in another way. Lawmakers and advocates in MICHIGAN, OHIO, OREGON, UTAH, and elsewhere fought to enact or improve state Earned Income Tax Credits to give a boost to low- and middle-income working families. But the opposite extreme was heavily represented as well, as others pushed for regressive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, including in KANSAS, NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO, UTAH, and WEST VIRGINIA. Even our “What We’re Reading” section has informative reading on how education funding policy continues to…
State tax policy can be a contentious topic, but one issue on which lawmakers largely agree is that higher gas tax rates are necessary to keep our nation’s infrastructure operating safely and efficiently. Lawmakers in 27 states have approved gas tax increases since 2013.
State Rundown 2/20: February and Regressive Tax Cuts, The “Meanest Moons of Winter”
February 20, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
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…
Happy Valentine’s Day to all lovers of quality research, sound fiscal policy, and progressive tax reforms! This week, some leaders in ARKANSAS displayed their infatuation with the rich by advancing regressive tax cuts, but others in the state are trying to show some love to low- and middle-income families instead. WISCONSIN lawmakers are devoted to tax reductions for the middle class but have not yet decided how to express those feelings. NEBRASKA legislators are playing the field, flirting with several very different property tax and school funding proposals. And VIRGINIA’s legislators and governor just decided to settle for a flawed…
The Illusion of Race-Neutral Tax Policy
February 14, 2019 • By Alan Essig, Carl Davis, Jenice Robinson, Meg Wiehe, Misha Hill, Steve Wamhoff
It is well known that the bulk of the federal tax cuts flowed to the highest-earning households, who received the largest tax cut both in terms of real dollars and also as a share of income. But as our analysis with Prosperity Now reveals, solely examining the tax law in the context of class misses a bigger-picture story about how the nation’s public policies not only perpetuate widening income and wealth inequality, they also preserve historic and current injustices that continue to allow white communities to build wealth while denying the same level of opportunity (and often suppressing it) to…
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), enacted by President Trump and Congressional Republicans at the end of 2017, has caused quite a bit of confusion, and a recent “Fact Checker” column by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler does not help. TCJA created real problems that can't be resolved without real tax reform. To begin that process fact checkers, lawmakers, and everyone else need to be clear about what TCJA did, and did not, do to our tax system.
ITEP in the News
CNBC: Why Trump Tax Deductions – For Tips, Car Loans and More – May Not Carry Large Benefits for Low Earners
Houston Chronicle: The Biggest Winners in Texas from Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’
Newsweek: Did Republicans Just Kill the Filibuster?
AP News: Ohio Budget Bill With Browns Stadium Funding, LGBTQ+ Restrictions Heads to Gov. Mike DeWine
CNBC: How the Republican Megabill Targets Immigrant Finances
ITEP Work in Action
More Perfect Union: The One Big Beautiful Bill Is a Big Corporate Cash Grab
Center for Law and Social Policy: Senate Budget Reconciliation Bill Sacrifices the Well-Being of Working Families to Give Tax Breaks to Billionaires
CBPP: Missouri Poised to Enact Appalling Giveaway to its Richest Residents
NC Budget & Tax Center: It’s Time for a Millionaire’s Tax in North Carolina
Nebraska Legislature: Poverty Elimination Action Plan
Institute on Taxation
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ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
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