Recent Work by ITEP

Morgan Stanley Report Confirms Tax Cut Promises Made Are Promises Unkept

December 7, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner

Almost a year after lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, evidence continues to mount that it is providing far more tax cuts than jobs. A new Morgan Stanley report estimates that U.S. companies repatriated between $50 billion and $100 billion of offshore cash in the third quarter of 2018. This means companies […]

The Federal Estate Tax: An Important Progressive Revenue Source

December 6, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

For years, wealth and income inequality have been widening at a troubling pace. One study estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 42 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012, up from 28 percent in 1989. Lawmakers have exacerbated this trend by dramatically cutting federal taxes on inherited wealth, most recently by doubling the estate tax exemption as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Further, lawmakers have done little to stop aggressive accounting schemes designed to avoid the estate tax altogether. This report explains how the percentage of estates subject to the federal estate tax…

State Rundown 12/5: Familiar Questions Returning to Fore as 2019 Approaches

December 5, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

State lawmakers are preparing their agendas for 2019 and looking at all sorts of tax and budget policies in the process, raising many familiar questions. Oregon legislators, for example, will try to fill in the blanks in a proposal to boost investments in education that left out detail on how to fund them, while their counterparts in Texas face the inverse problem of a proposed property tax cut that fails to clarify how schools could be protected from cuts. Similar school finance debates will play out in many other states. Alabama, Kansas, and Louisiana will look at gas tax updates,…

Housing for All? Developers Bulldoze Taxpayers in Affordable Housing Debate

December 4, 2018 • By Monica Miller

Affordable housing advocates across the nation are attempting to address the problem at the local level, but they often face political and community opposition. These challenges are currently playing out in Baltimore, which is turning into a case study in how the best-planned civic interventions run into tough road blocks when it comes to tax increases versus moneyed special interest who seek to block those tax increases.

New Legislation Aims to Change Tax Law Provisions That Incentivize Outsourcing

November 29, 2018 • By Richard Phillips

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and several Senate co-sponsors this week introduced the Removing Incentives for Outsourcing Act, which curbs harmful new incentives created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that encourage companies like GM to move their profits and operations offshore.

GM Announcement Confirms Tax Cuts Don’t Prevent, May Encourage Layoffs

November 27, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner

GM’s most recent quarterly financial report reveals the company has saved more than $150 million so far this year due to last year’s corporate tax cuts. So the layoffs announcement may seem especially jarring to anyone who believed President Trump’s claim that his tax cuts would spur job creation—including the Ohio residents Trump told directly “don’t sell your homes” because lost auto-making jobs “are all coming back.”

New ITEP Report on Depreciation Breaks: The Most Important Tax Giveaway that People Don’t Know About

November 19, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff

Many Americans sense that the tax code is riddled with unnecessary and costly breaks for big business, but if asked to name one, few would reply “accelerated depreciation.” While they may seem arcane, tax breaks like “full expensing” and other types of accelerated depreciation are among the central problems in our tax code. A new report from ITEP makes the case that any serious tax reform would repeal or sharply curb these provisions.

The Failure of Expensing and Other Depreciation Tax Breaks

November 19, 2018 • By Richard Phillips, Steve Wamhoff

Congress permitted full expensing only for five years, which will encourage businesses to speed up investments they would have made later. Republicans in Congress have discussed making the expensing provision permanent. This report argues that Congress should move in the other direction and repeal not just the full expensing provision but even some of the permanent accelerated depreciation breaks in the tax code, for several reasons.

House Democrats Falter with Proposed Rule to Restrict Tax Hikes

November 16, 2018 • By Alan Essig

Democratic leaders have proposed rules to be adopted in the next Congress, and many of them, such as eliminating the requirement for “dynamic scoring,” are very sensible. But one of the proposed rules is problematic because it would make it harder to raise revenue.

State Rundown 11/16: Election Results Clarify Agendas as Real Work Begins

November 16, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

State policymakers, voters, and observers have been reflecting on this year’s campaigns and looking ahead to how the policy opportunities in their states have shifted as a result. For example, Arkansas’s governor sees a fresh chance to slash income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, while the governor-elect of Illinois will be doing just the opposite, launching into a promised effort to shore up the state’s budget by asking the wealthy to pay more. New York and Virginia residents may end up with buyers’ remorse after Amazon accepted their combined $2 billion tax subsidy offers for its HQ2 project. And…