• blog  May 1, 2019

    State Rundown 5/1: Teacher Uprisings Continue on May Day

    Teachers in North Carolina and South Carolina are walking out and rallying this week for increased education funding, teacher and staff pay, and other improvements to benefit students—if you’re unsure why be sure to check out research on the teacher shortage and pay gap under “What We’re Reading” below. Meanwhile, budget debates have recently wrapped up in Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington. And major tax debates are kicking into high gear in both Louisiana and Nebraska.

  • blog  April 26, 2019

    ITEP Testimony Supporting H.B. No. 7415, An Act Concerning a Surcharge on Capital Gains

    Comments are intended to offer some perspective on the broader tax policy context in which this proposal is being considered. We find that this proposal would help to lessen long-running inequities in Connecticut’s state and local tax law that have allowed high-income taxpayers to pay lower overall effective tax rates than most low- and middle-income families.

  • blog  April 26, 2019

    State Rundown 4/26: Capital Gains Taxes Make Gains and Regressive Proposals Regress

    Progressive capital gains tax proposals made news this week in Connecticut and Massachusetts, while Nebraskans came out in force to oppose a regressive tax shift, and North Carolina teachers prepare to rally over their legislature’s proclivity to cut taxes on wealthy households while underfunding schools.

  • blog  April 25, 2019

    ICYMI: A Brief Summary of Our April Blogs and Reports

    From the first comprehensive look at corporate filings under the 2017 tax law to bold policy options from analysts and researchers to dramatically reduce poverty, here’s a summary of reports that ITEP released this month.

  • blog  April 23, 2019

    So-Called Opportunity Zones Provide Opportunity for Whom?

    In early April, a diverse but mostly black crowd took to the streets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. to protest T-Mobile’s decision to order Metro PCS to cease playing gogo music. This tale is a shining example of why economic investment—especially taxpayer-incentivized investment—in underserved communities is fraught with controversy. Who ultimately benefits after developers pour millions of dollars into these communities? And, as this controversy reveals, are the usually black and brown denizens of these neighborhoods and businesses that may have catered to them no longer welcome once economic development reaches a critical mass?

  • blog  April 18, 2019

    State Rundown 4/18: It’s Peak Season for State Fiscal Debates

    Tax and budget debates are now mostly complete in Alabama, Arkansas, and Colorado, but just starting or just getting interesting in several other states. Delaware and Massachusetts lawmakers, for example, are looking at progressive income tax increases on wealthy households, and New Hampshire may use a progressive tax on capital gains to simultaneously improve its upside-down tax code and invest in education. Nebraska and Texas, on the other hand, are also looking to improve school funding but plan to do so on the backs of low- and middle-income families through regressive sales tax increases. Fiscal debates are heating up in California and Louisiana as well.

  • blog  April 17, 2019

    States Could Lift Millions of Children Out of Poverty by Enacting State-Level Child Tax Credits

    In a new 50-state analysis, ITEP and the Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University teamed up to explain how state-level Child Tax Credits (CTCs) could lift between 2.1 and 4.5 million children out of poverty. The report outlines options that would help families who received little to no benefit from the expansion of the federal CTC included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

  • report  April 17, 2019

    The Case for Extending State-Level Child Tax Credits to Those Left Out: A 50-State Analysis

    As of 2017, 11.5 million children in the United States were living in poverty. A national, fully-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) would effectively address persistently high child poverty rates at the national and state levels. The federal CTC in its current form falls short of achieving this goal due to its earnings requirement and lack of full refundability. Fortunately, states have options to make state-level improvements in the absence of federal policy change. A state-level CTC is a tool that states can employ to remedy inequalities created by the current structure of the federal CTC. State-level CTCs would significantly reduce child poverty and deep poverty in all states while also addressing racial inequities that the current system has exacerbated. This report examines the poverty impacts, costs and beneficiaries of two options for a state-level CTC.

  • news release  April 17, 2019

    New 50-State Analysis: State Child Tax Credits Would Lift 2.1 to 4.5 Million Children out of Poverty

    Expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) at the state level could lift millions of children out of poverty and help families who benefited little or not at all from the 2017 federal expansion of the CTC, according to a 50-state report released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

  • ITEP Work in Action  April 15, 2019

    Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center: A Fair Share Tax Plan for Pennsylvania — 2019 Update

    This paper puts forward the Fair Share Tax plan, a major step toward fixing Pennsylvania’s broken tax system and raising the revenues we need to…