• blog  December 12, 2018

    End-of-Year Tax Measure Would Give Deficit-Financed Tax Cuts to Wealthy Families and Corporations

    Outgoing Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) today introduced legislation that includes $80 billion in tax cuts that are unpaid for and largely benefit the wealthy. The bill would, among its numerous provisions, expand retirement and education savings programs that offer very little value to low-income families, delay the Health Insurance Tax for an additional two years, and delay the Medical Device Tax for an additional five years.

  • blog  December 7, 2018

    Joint Letter: End the Tax Extenders Once And For All

    A joint letter to Congressional leadership and the heads of the taxwriting committees making the case that it is time to end the practice of enacting tax policy one year at a time.

  • blog  December 7, 2018

    Morgan Stanley Report Confirms Tax Cut Promises Made Are Promises Unkept

    Almost a year after lawmakers hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, evidence continues to mount that it is providing far more tax cuts…
  • press release  December 6, 2018

    2017 Tax Law Leaves More Wealthy Heirs with Tax-Free Inheritances

    Media contact A tiny fraction of estates will be subject to the tax in 2018 The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act drastically reduced the number…
  • report  December 6, 2018

    The Federal Estate Tax: An Important Progressive Revenue Source

    For years, wealth and income inequality have been widening at a troubling pace. One study estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 42 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012, up from 28 percent in 1989. Lawmakers have exacerbated this trend by dramatically cutting federal taxes on inherited wealth, most recently by doubling the estate tax exemption as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Further, lawmakers have done little to stop aggressive accounting schemes designed to avoid the estate tax altogether. This report explains how the percentage of estates subject to the federal estate tax has dropped dramatically from 2.16 percent in 2000 to just 0.06 percent in 2018, a 34-fold decrease in 19 years.

  • blog  December 5, 2018

    State Rundown 12/5: Familiar Questions Returning to Fore as 2019 Approaches

    State lawmakers are preparing their agendas for 2019 and looking at all sorts of tax and budget policies in the process, raising many familiar questions. Oregon legislators, for example, will try to fill in the blanks in a proposal to boost investments in education that left out detail on how to fund them, while their counterparts in Texas face the inverse problem of a proposed property tax cut that fails to clarify how schools could be protected from cuts. Similar school finance debates will play out in many other states. Alabama, Kansas, and Louisiana will look at gas tax updates, as Indiana and Mississippi will consider tobacco tax increases, and nearly every state has decisions to make about how to implement online sales taxes and what to do with the revenue.

  • blog  December 4, 2018

    Housing for All? Developers Bulldoze Taxpayers in Affordable Housing Debate

    Affordable housing advocates across the nation are attempting to address the problem at the local level, but they often face political and community opposition. These challenges are currently playing out in Baltimore, which is turning into a case study in how the best-planned civic interventions run into tough road blocks when it comes to tax increases versus moneyed special interest who seek to block those tax increases.

  • blog  November 29, 2018

    New Legislation Aims to Change Tax Law Provisions That Incentivize Outsourcing

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and several Senate co-sponsors this week introduced the Removing Incentives for Outsourcing Act, which curbs harmful new incentives created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that encourage companies like GM to move their profits and operations offshore.

  • blog  November 27, 2018

    GM Announcement Confirms Tax Cuts Don't Prevent, May Encourage Layoffs

    GM’s most recent quarterly financial report reveals the company has saved more than $150 million so far this year due to last year’s corporate tax cuts. So the layoffs announcement may seem especially jarring to anyone who believed President Trump’s claim that his tax cuts would spur job creation—including the Ohio residents Trump told directly “don’t sell your homes” because lost auto-making jobs “are all coming back.”

  • blog  November 19, 2018

    New ITEP Report on Depreciation Breaks: The Most Important Tax Giveaway that People Don’t Know About

    Many Americans sense that the tax code is riddled with unnecessary and costly breaks for big business, but if asked to name one, few would reply “accelerated depreciation.” While they may seem arcane, tax breaks like “full expensing” and other types of accelerated depreciation are among the central problems in our tax code. A new report from ITEP makes the case that any serious tax reform would repeal or sharply curb these provisions.