July 23, 2021 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
This month, we watched billionaire space-racers with skyrocketing fortunes literally rocket themselves into the sky to look down on us from the largest gap they could put between themselves and the people, communities, and institutions that made their fortunes possible. These events have put an exclamation point on one of the clearest lessons to come […]
President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan is the most ambitious economic and social agenda since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. It would redirect policy priorities to create educational and economic opportunities for low- and middle-income people and require corporations and wealthy people to pay a fairer share of taxes.
July 21, 2021 • By ITEP Staff
It’s Olympics season! As countries around the globe battle for first place in a plethora of sports and contests it’s as good a time as any to look around America to see which states deserve a gold medal in the ‘Equitable Tax Policy’ event...
July 20, 2021 • By Aidan Davis
For the next six months, low-, middle- and upper-middle-income families with children are eligible to receive part of their 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) in advanced monthly payments. More than putting money in people’s pockets, this policy recognizes “the dignity of working-class families and middle-class families,” as President Biden said last week.
July 16, 2021 • By Steve Wamhoff
Special interests lobbying against President Joe Biden’s tax agenda claim that his proposed corporate income tax rate hike will harm small businesses and that his proposed capital gains tax reforms will hurt family farms. Both claims are absurd attempts by powerful interests to pretend they are defending the little guy.
July 16, 2021 • By Steve Wamhoff
IRS budget cuts starting in 2010 have forced the agency to reduce its audit rate for corporations with $20 billion or more in assets from 98 percent to 50 percent. The Washington Post found that during the decade, the amount of “uncertain tax benefits” claimed by corporations increased 43 percent, from $164 billion in 2010 to $235 billion in 2020.
Comparing athletes to inanimate objects, of course, is incredibly degrading. It’s also standard fare in the sports talk world to compare athletes to stocks in which you want to buy low and trade high to maximize your returns—the greatest return usually being championship trophies. It wasn’t until ProPublica released its latest report, The Billionaire Playbook: How Sports Owners Use Their Teams to Avoid Millions in Taxes, that we were able to see so clearly how the athlete as a stock is not just a dehumanizing concept in team sports at the individual level, but also how owners of sports teams…
July 15, 2021 • By Jenice Robinson
During a Tuesday webinar (The Child Tax Credit in Practice: What We Know about the Payoffs of Payments) hosted by ITEP and the Economic Security Project, panelists explained why the expanded Child Tax Credit is a transformative policy that should be extended beyond 2021. They highlighted tax policy and anti-poverty research and discussed lessons learned from demonstration projects that have provided a guaranteed income to low-income families.
“It’s not just condominium buildings that are showing their age,” Peter Coy writes in a piece critiquing the condominium form of ownership for underinvesting in maintenance. Coy just as easily could have been describing American democracy that is showing its age in similar ways.
July 7, 2021 • By ITEP Staff
States were busy over the past week despite the Fourth of July holiday. Many are gearing up for upcoming tax and budget clashes that could shape their futures for some time...