Recent Work by ITEP

How State Tax Changes Affect Your Federal Taxes: A Primer on the “Federal Offset”

August 22, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill

Read this brief in PDF here. State lawmakers frequently make claims about how proposed tax changes would affect taxpayers at different income levels. Yet too many lawmakers routinely ignore one important consequence of their tax reform proposals: the effect of state tax changes on their constituents’ federal income tax bills. Wealthier taxpayers in particular can […]

Indexing Income Taxes for Inflation: Why It Matters

August 22, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill

Read brief in PDF here. All of us experience the effects of inflation as the price of the goods and services we buy gradually goes up over time. Fortunately, as the cost of living goes up, our incomes often tend to rise as well in order to keep pace. But many state tax systems are […]

The Folly of State Capital Gains Tax Cuts

August 17, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Meg Wiehe

Read the brief in a PDF here. The federal tax system treats income from capital gains more favorably than income from work. A number of state tax systems do as well, offering tax breaks for profits realized from local investments and, in some instances, from investments around the world. As states struggle to cope with […]

Tim Cook’s Disingenuous Argument to Justify Apple’s $215 Billion Offshore Cash Hoard

August 9, 2016 • By Jenice Robinson

Tim Cook is a persuasive CEO. In a wide-ranging interview published earlier this week in the Washington Post, he discussed his vision for the company, thoughts about leadership succession, and humbly admitted he has made mistakes. So it would be very easy to view as reasonable his declaration that Apple will not repatriate its offshore […]

Achieving Sustainable Infrastructure Revenue with Gas Tax Reform

August 8, 2016 • By Carl Davis

This brief outlines the causes of Louisiana's infrastructure revenue shortfall and offers recommendations for how the state can achieve "sufficient increased levels of recurring funding to address the transportation backlog in highway and bridge maintenance needs in Louisiana," as per the Task Force's mandate.

Fiscal Policy Shake-up Comes to Energy States

August 3, 2016 • By Aidan Davis

The sharp decline in oil prices since summer 2014 has allowed consumers to save hundreds of dollars annually at the pump, but it also has left some energy producing states clamoring to come up with policy ideas to make up for lost revenue.

Why Sales Taxes Should Apply to Services

July 27, 2016 • By Carl Davis

Read this Policy Brief in PDF here.  General sales taxes are an important revenue source for state governments, accounting for close to one-third of state tax collections nationwide. But most state sales taxes have a damaging structural flaw: they typically apply to most sales of goods, such as books and computers, but exempt most services […]

Income Tax Offers Alaska a Brighter Fiscal Future

July 12, 2016 • By Aidan Davis, Carl Davis

Read this report in PDF. This month, Alaska legislators regroup in yet another special session where they will consider legislation to address a yawning budget gap created by declining oil tax and royalty revenues. Through the use of his veto pen, Gov. Bill Walker has partially addressed the gap with cuts to state spending and […]

Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform

July 11, 2016 • By Meg Wiehe

This brief was updated July 2018 Read this Policy Brief in PDF here. Sales taxes are an important revenue source, composing close to half of all state tax revenues.[1] But sales taxes are also inherently regressive because the lower a family’s income, the more the family must spend on goods and services subject to the […]

Ryan Tax Plan Reserves Most Tax Cuts for Top 1 percent, Costs $4 Trillion Over 10 Years

June 29, 2016 • By ITEP Staff

A new distributional analysis of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” policies finds that the plan would: • Add $4 trillion to the national debt over a decade. • Overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent of tax payers while resulting in a net loss for the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers. • Slash corporate […]