• blog  May 23, 2018

    State Rundown 5/23: Special Sessions Abound Amid Budget Vetoes, Stalemates, Federal Tax Bill

    This week the governors of Louisiana and Minnesota both vetoed budget bills, leading to another special session in Louisiana and unanswered questions in Minnesota, and Missouri legislators managed to push through a tax shift bill just before adjourning their regular session and heading right into a special session to impeach their governor. Wisconsin and Wyoming localities are both looking at ways to raise revenues as state funding drops. And our What We’re Reading section contains helpful pieces on changing demographics, the effects of wealth inequality on families with children, and the impacts of the Supreme Court sports gambling and online sales tax cases.

  • press release  May 23, 2018

    State efforts to shield taxpayers from SALT cap expose deeper flaws with tax incentives for charitable contributions

    Long before the tax law passed, some states abused the idea of charitable giving to funnel public money to various activities, such as private K-12 education, by reimbursing up to 100 percent of their taxpayers’ donations with tax credits. The flimsy, hastily-written SALT deduction cap enacted last year made this type of gaming even easier than before, and it was entirely predictable that states would respond by enacting more tax credits of this type.

  • report  May 23, 2018

    SALT/Charitable Workaround Credits Require a Broad Fix, Not a Narrow One

    The federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) enacted last year temporarily capped deductions for state and local tax (SALT) payments at $10,000 per year. The cap, which expires at the end of 2025, disproportionately impacts taxpayers in higher-income states and in states and localities more reliant on income or property taxes, as opposed to sales taxes. Increasingly, lawmakers in those states who feel their residents were unfairly targeted by the federal law are debating and enacting tax credits that can help some of their residents circumvent this cap.

  • ITEP Work in Action  May 22, 2018

    NC Policy Watch: Governor Cooper recognizes North Carolina is in a hole, stops digging

    Holding off on another round of tax cuts for the richest taxpayers and profitable corporations and keeping the increased standard deduction and lower rate for…
  • blog  May 22, 2018

    Most States Have Raised Gas Taxes in Recent Years

    State tax policy can be a contentious topic, but in recent years there has been a remarkable level of agreement on one tax in particular: the gasoline tax. Increasingly, state lawmakers are deciding that outdated gas taxes need to be raised and reformed to fund infrastructure projects that are vital to their economies.

  • brief  May 22, 2018

    How Long Has It Been Since Your State Raised Its Gas Tax?

    Many state governments are struggling to repair and expand their transportation infrastructure because they are attempting to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with fixed-rate gasoline taxes that are rarely increased.

  • blog  May 21, 2018

    Debate Over New Jersey’s Millionaires and ITEP’s Data

    New Jersey’s new governor, Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to raise state income taxes on millionaires, a proposal that is supported by 70 percent of the state and was, until recently, backed by New Jersey’s Senate President, Steve Sweeney. In recent months, Sweeney changed his position on the proposed millionaires tax and called for an increase in New Jersey’s corporate tax instead. The idea of hiking taxes on corporations is not a bad one, particularly since corporations received a windfall from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But Sweeney’s new opposition to an income tax hike for the state’s richest residents seems to be based on an erroneous reading of ITEP’s data.

  • ITEP Work in Action  May 18, 2018

    Louisiana Budget Project: Black households would bear disproportionate burden of sales tax renewal

    Lawmakers can address this imbalance by expanding Louisiana’s EITC. An increase of the state EITC from 3.5 percent to 7 percent of the federal EITC…
  • blog  May 17, 2018

    State Rundown 5/17: Don't Bet on Legal Sports Betting Solving State Budget Woes

    This week the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to legal sports gambling in the states (see our What We’re Reading section), which will surely be a hot topic in state legislative chambers, but most states currently have more pressing matters before them. The teacher pay crisis made news in North Carolina, Alabama, and nationally. Louisiana, Oregon, and Vermont lawmakers are headed for special sessions over tax and budget issues. And several other states have recently reached or are very near the end of their legislative sessions. 

  • blog  May 16, 2018

    Why Proponents of the Trump-GOP Tax Law Can’t Get their Story Straight

    If you listened closely to today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), you could sense that the witnesses speaking in favor of the new tax law were not 100 percent on the same page. This has been apparent ever since the law was enacted at the end of last year. The economists who speak in favor of the law (including Douglas Holtz-Eakin at today’s hearing) tend to focus on other indicators of its success. They know that the talk of bonuses and raises is nothing more than a desperate corporate PR campaign to save the law from being repealed or scaled back in the future.