ITEP – Page 80 – Informing tax policy debate nationwide

brief September 26, 2019
Reducing the Cost of Child Care Through State Tax Codes in 2019

The high cost of quality child care is a budget constraint for many working families and particularly daunting for parents who are working but earning low wages. Most families with children need one or more incomes to make ends meet which means child care expenses are an increasingly unavoidable and unaffordable expense. This policy brief examines state tax policy tools that can be used to make child care more affordable: a dependent care tax credit modeled after the federal program and a deduction for child care expenses.
brief September 26, 2019
Property Tax Circuit Breakers in 2019

State lawmakers seeking to make residential property taxes more affordable have two broad options: across-the-board tax cuts for taxpayers at all income levels, such as a homestead exemption or a tax cap, and targeted tax breaks that are given only to particular groups of low- and middle-income taxpayers. This policy brief surveys the advantages and disadvantages of the circuit breaker approach to reducing property taxes.
brief September 26, 2019
Boosting Incomes and Improving Tax Equity with State Earned Income Tax Credits in 2019

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a policy designed to bolster the incomes of low-wage workers and offset some of the taxes they pay, providing the opportunity for families struggling to afford the high cost of living to step up and out of poverty toward meaningful economic security. The federal EITC has kept millions of Americans out of poverty since its enactment in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, the effectiveness of the EITC has been magnified as many states have enacted and later expanded their own credits.
blog September 25, 2019
Wealth Tax Proposals from Warren and Sanders: What You Should Know

Earlier this year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal wealth tax on a handful of U.S. households with the highest net worth. Sen. Bernie Sanders has just announced his own wealth tax proposal, which is similar to Warren’s. A few other presidential candidates say they support the concept although they have not provided any details. Here’s what you need to know about the potential for a federal wealth tax.
blog September 20, 2019
Business Roundtable Members’ Social Responsibility Pledges are Easily Made, and Easily Broken

It was this side of last month that the Business Roundtable made headlines by announcing its new vision of the purpose of a corporation. More than 180 corporate leaders signed the statement, which declared corporations will prioritize the communities in which they work⁠—instead of shareholder value. But for some corporations, the Business Roundtable statement is yesterday’s news, and they are commencing with business as usual.
blog September 19, 2019
Capital Gains Tax Breaks Are Finally on the Defensive

One of the most glaring sources of unfairness in the federal tax code are rules that tax capital gains, which mostly go to the rich, less than wages and other types of income that most of us depend on. The capital gains tax breaks have for decades been comfortably ensconced behind trenches filled with special interests who would defend them until the end. But the end is now conceivable.
blog September 17, 2019
Julián Castro Provides the Latest Proposal to Expand Refundable Tax Credits

New estimates from ITEP show that Julián Castro’s refundable tax credit proposal would mostly benefit the bottom 60 percent of households and would have a cost ($195 billion in 2020) that places it roughly in the middle of the different tax credit proposals that Democrats have offered over the past several months.
report September 17, 2019
Working Families First Credit

The Working Families First Credit proposal would increase the CTC from $2,000 to $3,000 and remove the limits on refundability that prevent many lower-income families from receiving the entire credit and expand the EITC by increasing the rate at which earnings are credited and it would provide a larger increase for childless workers. View the distributional analysis.
map September 16, 2019
Cannabis Tax Revenue, Per Capita, April - June 2019

Seven states currently allow for the legal, taxable sale of recreational cannabis. The above map shows per capita revenue collections from excise and sales taxes on cannabis during the second quarter of 2019, the most recent period for which data are available in every state. The most lucrative cannabis market in the country, from a tax revenue perspective, is in Washington State where the 46 percent combined tax rate applied to cannabis is the highest in the country. Collections in California and Massachusetts, by contrast, remain low as these states are still in the early stages of establishing their legal markets. ITEP has issued in-depth analyses of cannabis taxes in general and of California’s market in particular.
blog September 16, 2019
The Case for a Federal Wealth Tax

A federal wealth tax on the richest 0.1 percent of Americans is a viable approach for Congress to raise revenue and address economic inequality. This new video from ITEP makes the case for a federal wealth tax.