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blog
June 18, 2020
National and State-by-State Estimates of House-Passed Improvements in Tax Credits for Workers and Children
Among other important provisions, the HEROES Act includes reforms to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) to make these tax credits more effective in helping working people and helping parents afford the costs of raising children.
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blog
June 16, 2020
Tax Justice and Racial Justice: Transformative Change Is Overdue
Progressive tax policy can spur deep investments in communities, help families afford childcare and college, provide healthcare for everyone, re-imagine energy consumption to stop heating the planet, expand parks and bike lanes and public transit. Economic justice can give workers a greater voice than corporations in our democracy. People are protesting because the moment for transformative change in policing and our economy is long overdue.
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blog
June 11, 2020
State Rundown 6/11: Fiscal Debates Continue Amid Turmoil
As calls to defund the police demonstrate, state and local decisions about funding priorities and how those funds are raised are deeply embedded in racial… -
blog
June 11, 2020
COVID-19 Unveils Need for Fair Taxation at the State Level
Most people assume that the federal government is the main—if not only—agent for ensuring economic stability and recovery in response to COVID. Yet, the fight for tax fairness at the state level will have a dramatic impact on economic recovery.
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blog
June 2, 2020
White House Incredibly Still Believes Tax Cuts Are the Answer to America’s Problems
White House officials continue to discuss tax cuts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Steve Wamhoff provides a roundup of these terrible ideas that would do little to boost investment or reach those who need it most.
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report
June 2, 2020
Depreciation Breaks Have Saved 20 Major Corporations $26.5 Billion Over Past Two Years
The Trump administration and its congressional allies have proposed making permanent the expensing provision in the Trump-GOP tax law. Expensing is the most extreme form of accelerated depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the cost of purchasing equipment more quickly than it wears out. But expensing and other types of accelerated depreciation already account for a very large share of corporate tax breaks and allows many companies to pay nothing at all.
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blog
June 2, 2020
Trump-GOP Tax Law Encourages Companies to Move Jobs Offshore–and New Tax Cuts Won’t Change That
New tax cuts to incentivize bringing jobs back to the United States will fail. No new tax provisions can be more generous than the zero percent rate the 2017 law provides for many offshore profits or the loopholes that allow corporations to shift profits to countries with minimal or no corporate income taxes.
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blog
May 28, 2020
Trump Administration Stops Pretending to Care About the Economy with Its Capital Gains Tax Proposal
Proponents of capital gains tax breaks have always offered a weak argument that they encourage investment and thereby grow the economy. But the Trump administration is now floating a temporary capital gains tax break, which is supported by no argument at all. It would only reward investments made in the past while doing nothing to encourage new investment.
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blog
May 27, 2020
State Rundown 5/27: Some States Finally Talking Revenue Solutions to Revenue Crisis
This week the immense scale and uneven distribution of economic and health damage from the COVID-19 pandemic continued to come into focus, hand in hand with greater clarity around pandemic-related revenue losses threatening state and local revenues and the priorities—such as health care, education, and public safety—they fund. Officials in many states, including Ohio and Tennessee, nonetheless rushed to declare their unwillingness to be part of any solution that includes raising the tax contributions of their highest-income residents. On the brighter side, some leaders are willing to do just that, for example through progressive tax increases proposed in New York and corporate tax subsidy reductions discussed in California.
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blog
May 22, 2020
What Biden Means By No Tax Increases on Anyone “Making Under $400,000”
Presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Friday that under his proposals, no one with income below $400,000 would pay higher taxes than they do now.…