• blog  April 27, 2018

    State Rundown 4/27: Arbor Day Brings Some Fruitful Tax Developments, Some Shady Proposals

    This Arbor Day week, the seeds of discontent with underfunded school systems and underpaid teachers continued to spread, with walkouts occurring in both Arizona and Colorado. And recognizing the need to see the forest as well as the trees, the Arizona teachers have presented revenue solutions to get to the true root of the problem. In the plains states, tax cut proposals continue to pop up like weeds in Kansas and threaten to spread to Iowa and Missouri, where lawmakers are running out of time but are still hoping their efforts to pass destructive tax cuts will bear fruit.

  • blog  April 27, 2018

    Trump Administration’s Spending Priorities Echo Tax Cut Priorities: Punish the Poor and Lavish the Rich

    In 2017, the Trump Administration released a budget proposal filled with loaded language about “welfare reform” and moving able-bodied people from welfare to work. This narrative is designed to perpetuate the pernicious idea that poor people have personal shortcomings and are taking something that rightly belongs to others.

  • blog  April 26, 2018

    15 Companies Report Tax Savings of $6.2 Billion in First Three Months of 2018

    In reports released over the past week, covering the first three months of 2018, a few of the biggest and most profitable Fortune 500 corporations acknowledge receiving billions in tax cuts in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Fifteen of these companies collectively disclosed reducing their effective tax rates by $6.2 billion compared to the rates they faced in the first quarter of last year.

  • blog  April 20, 2018

    State Rundown 12/31/9999: IRS Glitch and Legislative Impasses Extend Tax Season

    This week the IRS website asked some would-be tax filers to return after December 31, 9999. State legislators don’t have quite that much time, but are struggling to wrap up their tax debates on schedule as well. Iowa legislators, for example, are ironically still debating tax cuts despite having run out of money to cover their daily expenses for the year. Nebraska’s session wrapped up, but its tax debate continues in the form of a call for a special session and the threat of an unfunded tax cut going before voters in November. Mississippi’s tax debate has been revived by emergency bridge closings. Kentucky’s session went down to the wire as lawmakers overrode vetoes to push through a tax increase to help fund teacher salaries that raises taxes on most taxpayers while cutting them for the richest 5 percent tax. And lawmakers in Arizona and Colorado may need to stay after school to resolve teacher pay issues.

  • blog  April 20, 2018

    Trends We're Watching in 2018, Part 5: 21st Century Consumption Taxes

    We’re highlighting the progress of a few newer trends in consumption taxation. This includes using the tax code to discourage consumption of everything from plastic bags to carbon and collecting revenue from emerging industries like ride sharing services and legalized cannabis sales.

  • blog  April 19, 2018

    Congressional Budget Office: New Tax Law Helps Foreign Investors Even More than You Thought

    President Trump and his allies in Congress have made many wild claims about economic growth that would result from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And the Congressional Budget Office just released a report revealing the TCJA will, in fact, create economic growth — for foreign investors.

  • blog  April 16, 2018

    Key Takeaways from John Oliver’s Segment on Corporate Tax Avoidance

    The HBO television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has become known for its longer segments that examine important issues facing the country. In its latest segment on Sunday, the show took a deep dive into corporate taxes and how many companies manage to avoid paying their fair share. Between its hilarious interludes, the segment painted a striking portrait of problems in our corporate tax code and how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) failed to address them.

  • blog  April 13, 2018

    State Rundown 4/13: Teacher Strikes, Special Sessions, Federal Cuts Haunting States

    This Friday the 13th is a spooky one for many state lawmakers, as past bad fiscal decisions have been coming back to haunt them in the form of teacher strikes and walk-outs in Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, policymakers in Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Utah all attempted to exorcise negative consequences of the federal tax-cut bill from their tax codes. And our What We’re Reading section includes yet another stake to the heart of the millionaire tax-flight myth and other good reads.

  • report  April 13, 2018

    10 Things You Should Know about the Nation's Tax System

    Everyone pays taxes, including those who earn the least. Our collective federal, state, and local tax system includes income taxes, payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare), property taxes, sales and other excise taxes. The total share of taxes (federal, state, and local) that Americans across the economic spectrum will pay in 2018 is roughly equal to their total share of income.

  • report  April 12, 2018

    Many Large Corporations Reporting Tax Cut-Inspired Employee Bonuses Were Paying Low Tax Rates to Begin With

    Since the corporate tax cut took effect at the beginning of 2018, a number of large corporations have announced plans to give bonuses or pay raises to some of their employees. Some of these companies have explicitly said that the new tax law, which sharply reduced the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, made these moves possible. But an examination of the tax-paying habits of these corporations found that many of them used various tax breaks and accounting maneuvers to reduce their tax rates to below 21 percent year after year before the new tax law passed.