Recent Work by ITEP

State Rundown 5/7: State Fiscal Responses to Pandemic Starting to Get Real

May 7, 2020 • By ITEP Staff

State lawmakers are starting to use fiscal policy levers to address the COVID-19 pandemic, but the actions vary greatly and are just a start. Mississippi, for example, is one state still clarifying who has authority to determine how federal aid dollars are spent. Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, and Ohio are among the many states identifying painful funding cuts they will likely make to shared priorities like health care. The Louisiana House and the Minnesota Senate each advanced tax cuts and credits that could dig their budget holes even deeper. Connecticut leaders are looking at one of the more comprehensive packages, which…

Trump’s Latest Tax Break Proposals Include Everything—Except Helping Regular People 

May 6, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff

None of the tax proposals considered by the administration would provide help to those who need it or do much, if anything, to boost investment.

Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut Makes Even Less Sense as Job Losses Mount

May 5, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff

Last August, long before COVID-19 ravaged the U.S. economy, the Trump Administration began touting a payroll tax cut as a stimulus. Now, with more than 30 million official unemployment claims and projections that the jobless rate could grow to Depression-era levels, the White House is claiming that a payroll tax cut is the best way […]

The Price We Pay for Amazon in Its Prime

May 5, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner

There is every reason to believe that Amazon will continue its tax-avoidance ways in 2020. The entirely-legal tax avoidance tools the company used to zero out its federal income tax bills over the last three years remain entirely legal today. From accelerated depreciation to the research and development tax credit to the deduction for executive stock options, Amazon’s tax avoidance tools have been blessed by lawmakers, and presidents, of all stripes.

Intended Consequences: Deliberate Disinvestment Caused Florida’s Unemployment Disaster

May 4, 2020 • By Stephanie Clegg

Florida politicians deliberately rigged the unemployment system after the Great Recession to avoid raising taxes on businesses. Now, in a pandemic, some out-of-work residents are left waiting more than six weeks for unemployment benefits while more than 280,000 others have been inexplicably denied. What’s happening in Florida underscores deeper challenges with systems that should help those in need, but instead are designed to fail them.

Two Pandemics, Separate and Unequal

May 1, 2020 • By Jenice Robinson

COVID-19 has revealed a policy apparatus that reflexively prioritizes those who need it least, a wholly inadequate safety net, an underfunded public health infrastructure, and an inefficient national health stockpile. If the nation stays this course, it will make only cosmetic restorations to a shoddily built house.  

State Rundown 4/29: State Responses and Federal Aid Could Be Among “May Flowers” to Come

April 29, 2020 • By ITEP Staff

April has brought relentless showers of troublesome tax and budget news as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on communities and the public services and institutions that both support and depend on them. There is hope, however, that these troubles have opened the eyes of policymakers and that May will bring more clarity and strong action in the form of federal fiscal relief as well as home-grown state and local responses.

Economic Catastrophe in States Looms as Federal Relief Lags

April 29, 2020 • By Amy Hanauer

A bipartisan group of governors and senators from Louisiana to Maryland to Ohio have called for at least $500 billion in state and local fiscal relief. They also need specific help with testing, protective equipment, unemployment costs, Medicaid costs, social services, education and infrastructure. States can’t be on their own as they address the double whammy of plunging revenue and skyrocketing needs.

Pandemic Profits: Netflix’s Record Profit Haul, Past Tax Avoidance Raise Questions about Tax Law’s Weaknesses

April 29, 2020 • By Matthew Gardner

At a time when many companies are facing existential threats due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic shutdown, it is vital to ensure that our corporate tax laws apply fairly to companies that are still turning a profit in these turbulent times.

Sales Tax Policy in a Pandemic: Exemptions for Digital Goods and Services Are More Outdated Than Ever

April 29, 2020 • By Estefan Hernandez Escoto

Many states are making the decline in sales tax collection worse by failing to apply their sales taxes to digital goods (such as downloads of music, movies, or software) and services (such as digital streaming). A state that taxes movie theater tickets but not digital streaming, for instance, is needlessly hastening the decline of its own sales tax.