• blog  May 16, 2025

    The House Tax Plan, By the Numbers

    The House of Representatives unveiled a sprawling piece of tax legislation earlier this week that would extend temporary tax changes enacted in 2017 and layer various kinds of tax cuts and increases on top. The JCT analysis makes clear that the House tax plan would be regressive, meaning it would offer larger tax cuts as a share of income to high-income taxpayers than to either middle-class or working-class families. It also makes clear that most of the tax cuts would go to families with above-average incomes.

  • blog  May 15, 2025

    House Tax Bill Would Encourage Dynastic Wealth Hoarding by Further Weakening the Estate Tax

    The sprawling tax and spending bill before the House of Representatives would cut more than $200 billion from food assistance, potentially affecting 4 million children and 7 million adults, while providing an estate tax cut costing roughly the same amount to a few thousand people who will leave behind more than $7 million to their heirs.

  • brief  May 15, 2025

    House Tax Bill Enlists the Wealthy to Spread Private School Vouchers

    The House tax plan cuts charitable giving tax incentives for donors to most nonprofit groups while roughly tripling the incentive available to donors to groups that fund private K-12 school vouchers. The bill would also allow private school voucher donors to avoid capital gains tax on their gifts of corporate stock, creating a profitable tax shelter for wealthy people who agree to help funnel public funds into private schools. The bill would reduce federal tax revenue by $23.2 billion over the next 10 years as currently drafted, or by $67 billion over the next 10 years if it is extended beyond its four-year expiration date.

  • blog  May 15, 2025

    State Rundown 5/15: State Tax Debates Carry On in the Midst of Chaotic Federal Tax Landscape

    Even as most major headlines have been about the ever-changing landscape of federal tax policy, the latest “ideas of the week,” and now the House tax bill, state tax policy continues to be a priority for lawmakers.

  • blog  May 10, 2025

    Trump’s Proposed Higher Tax Rate on the Richest Taxpayers Would Affect Very Little of Their Income

    President Donald Trump has proposed allowing the top rate to revert from 37 percent to 39.6 percent for taxable income greater than $5 million for married couples and $2.5 million for unmarried taxpayers. But many other special breaks in the tax code would ensure that most income of very well-off people would never be subject to Trump’s 39.6 percent tax rate.

  • blog  May 7, 2025

    State Rundown 5/7: As Budget Season Heats Up, Tax Proposals Are Getting Serious

    With spring in full bloom ,many state lawmakers are reaching tax policy agreements. Out west, lawmakers in North Dakota and Texas have moved major property tax cuts. Meanwhile, in the east and south, Vermont appears likely to pass an expansion to its Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, and South Carolina lawmakers are aiming to make deep, drastic cuts to the state’s income tax.

  • brief  May 7, 2025

    What Corporations Have to Gain from the Gutting of the IRS

    Seven huge corporations recently announced that in 2024 they were allowed to collectively keep $1.4 billion in tax breaks from previous years that they had publicly admitted would likely be found illegal if investigated – all because the tax authorities were unable to identify and disallow them before the statute of limitations ran out.

  • brief  May 6, 2025

    Maryland’s New Budget Boosts Tax Revenue and Equity

    The final budget adopted by the Maryland General Assembly shows progress in advancing tax equity in the state while boosting state revenues to address the…
  • blog  May 5, 2025

    America Has Left the Building: U.S. Loses from Our Global Tax Policy Choices, Others Could Gain

    Countries that once looked to the U.S. for direction on tax policy have concluded they need to form alliances without us. If so, it will often be to the benefit of other people around the globe and to the deficit of U.S. communities.

  • brief  May 2, 2025

    Federal Tax Debate 2025

    The tax cuts in the House bill mostly flow to those who have the most. Roughly 68% of the tax cuts go to the richest 20% in the U.S. Some other notable changes would support private school voucher programs, harm immigrant communities, and widen income and racial inequality.