Recent Work by ITEP

We’re Hiring: Lead Tax Model Platform Developer

June 18, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

Join our team! ITEP has an opening for a Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack) to join our creative, passionate and productive staff as Lead Tax Model Platform Developer. This position will work directly with the technical engine behind our work: ITEP’s Microsimulation Tax Model. The Lead Tax Model Platform Developer reports directly to ITEP’s senior economist and works closely with the entire policy analyst team.

Calling Progressive Tax Proposals “Extreme” Are Taunts Meant to Distract

June 18, 2019 • By Steve Wamhoff

Dismissing calls for progressive taxes as “radical,” “extreme,” or “socialism” are taunts meant to distract from the real question: Why should we ignore the bottom half of Americans, whose share of the economic pie shrank and now have negative net worth, while allowing the wealthy and powerful, whose net worth more than tripled, to dictate our public policies?

State Rundown 6/12: Progress in Taxing the Rich, Expanding EITCs, and Taming Tax Subsidies

June 12, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

This week saw lawmakers in Ohio propose significant harmful tax cuts, leaders in California and Oregon work toward strengthening the state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs), and governors in Missouri and Kansas declare a truce to end the practice of bribing businesses in the Kansas City area with tax cuts to move from one side of the state line to the other. Meanwhile, Massachusetts leaders are discussing ways of raising taxes on their richest households, which our latest Just Taxes blog post notes is a promising trend this year across many states.

Taxing the Rich Works

June 12, 2019 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill

States are putting evidence into practice with multiple efforts to improve services and tax codes through more progressive taxes on the wealthy. Clear evidence has spread widely this year, informing a national conversation about progressive taxation and leading lawmakers in multiple states to eschew supply-side superstition and act on real evidence instead. Taxing the rich works, and in this Just Taxes blog we review state-level efforts to put these proven findings into effect.

New SALT Workaround Regulations Narrow a Tax Shelter, but Work Remains to Close it Entirely

June 11, 2019 • By Carl Davis

Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released its final regulations cracking down on a tax shelter long favored by private and religious K-12 schools, and more recently adopted by some “blue state” lawmakers in the wake of the 2017 Trump tax cut. The regulations come more than a year after the IRS first announced the […]

Does Your State Offer Tax Credits for Private K-12 School Voucher Donations?

June 10, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

Eighteen states provide public support to private and religious K-12 schools through large tax credits for taxpayers who contribute money to K-12 school voucher funds. These credits range from 50 percent to 100 percent of the amount contributed, which far exceeds the tax benefit available for charitable contributions to other organizations such as homeless shelters […]

Congress Steers Away from Entrenching So-Called Free File Program

June 6, 2019 • By Steve Wamhoff

Just before tax day in April, ITEP’s Jessica Schieder wrote that two proposals before Congress would take taxpayers in opposite directions. One was a bill passed in the House on a voice vote that included, among many other provisions, a section making permanent the “Free File” program under which private tax preparers claim to offer […]

State Rundown 6/5: Illinois Gets Busy

June 5, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

Illinois made big news in several tax and budget areas recently, including sending a graduated income tax amendment to voters in 2020, as well as legalizing and taxing cannabis and updating gas and cigarette taxes for infrastructure improvements. Connecticut made smaller waves with sales tax reforms, a plastic bag tax, and a progressive mansion tax. Property tax credits were proposed in both Maine and New Jersey. And Nevada extended a business tax to give teachers a raise. And our What We’re Reading section is brimming with good reads on how states are doing with recovering from the Great Recession, funding…

Tax Credit Wins and Continued Debates in the States

June 5, 2019 • By Aidan Davis

Income inequality continues to be an undercurrent in public discourse about our economy and how working families are faring. It drove the national debate over the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which, mounds of data reveal has exacerbated the problem. Some elected federal officials have responded to this step backward with calls for higher […]

ITEP Resources on Proposed SALT Workaround Regulations

June 5, 2019 • By Carl Davis

After states implemented laws that allow taxpayers to circumvent the new $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), the IRS has proposed regulations to address this practice. It’s a safe bet the IRS will try to crack down on the newest policies that provide tax credits for donations to public education and other public services, but it remains to be seen whether new regulations will put an end to a longer-running practice of exploiting tax loopholes in some states that allow public money to be funneled to private schools.