Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.
Carl Davis
Carl Davis is the research director at ITEP, where he has worked since 2008. Carl works on a wide range of issues related to both state and federal tax policy. He has advised policymakers, researchers, and advocates on tax policy issues in nearly every state. Much of his work relates to the link between taxes and economic growth, and the shortcomings of dynamic scoring and supply-side economic theories.
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report October 7, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
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blog September 12, 2024 Voucher Boondoggle: House Advances Plan to Give the Wealthy $1.20 for Every $1 They Steer to Private K-12 Schools
The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee has advanced a new school voucher bill. H.R. 9462—the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2024—would create an unprecedented tax incentive designed to fund private, mostly religious, K-12 schools.
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blog September 9, 2024 The Quiet Effort to Make Single Parenthood More Expensive
After the dust settles on this year’s election, one of the most pressing issues confronting the next Congress and President will be how to deal with the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts and, more specifically, who will pay for the cost of extending some or all of those cuts. Among the more widely accepted ideas circulating on the right is to raise income taxes on single parents, more than four in five of whom are women and a disproportionate share of whom are people of color.
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ITEP Work in Action August 26, 2024 ITEP’s Carl Davis: Pyramids, Cascades, and the Taxation of Business Inputs
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis gave this presentation to the New Mexico Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee on August 23, 2024. View the slides here. -
blog August 6, 2024 Minnesota Stands Out for Its Moderately Progressive Tax Code
Minnesota stands apart from the rest of the country with a moderately progressive tax system that asks slightly more of the rich than of low- and middle-income families. Recent reforms signed by Gov. Tim Walz have contributed to this reality.
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report July 30, 2024 Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants
Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase.
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report June 26, 2024 States Should Enact, Expand Mansion Taxes to Advance Fairness and Shared Prosperity
The report was produced in partnership with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and co-authored by CBPP’s Deputy Director of State Policy Research Samantha Waxman.[1] Click here to use… -
brief April 16, 2024 Is California Really a High-Tax State?
Key Findings For families of modest means, California is not a high-tax state. California taxes are close to the national average for families in the bottom 80 percent of the… -
blog April 1, 2024 Five Things to Know About Tax Foundation’s Critique of Maryland’s Worldwide Combined Reporting Proposal
Maryland lawmakers are considering enacting worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), also known as complete reporting. This policy offers a more accurate, and less gameable, way to calculate the amount of profit… -
report February 6, 2024 Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality
Historic and ongoing discrimination have created stark racial disparities in the US, and the racial retirement wealth gap is one such example.
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ITEP Work in Action February 5, 2024 Video: ITEP’s Carl Davis Discusses ‘Who Pays?’ at Rhode Island Revenue Roundtable
ITEP researcher Carl Davis joins the Economic Progress Institute (EPI) for Rhode Island’s Revenue Roundtable.
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ITEP Work in Action January 29, 2024 ITEP’s Carl Davis: Who Pays Vermont Taxes?
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis gave a presentation on Vermont’s tax system to that state’s Ways and Means Committee on January 25, 2024. Click here for the slide deck. -
blog January 24, 2024 New Mexico Making Tremendous Progress Making Taxes Less Regressive
Recent tax reforms have helped to bring greater balance to New Mexico’s tax code. A new in-depth look at taxes in all 50 states finds New Mexico is an emerging leader, though there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
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blog January 22, 2024 Latest Kansas Tax Plan Would Provide an Estimated $875,000 Tax Cut to Charles Koch
Last week, both houses of the Kansas legislature approved a significant tax cut centered around replacing the state’s graduated rate income tax structure with a flat tax instead. The bulk… -
blog January 19, 2024 How the Fairness of State Tax Codes Affects Public Education
The findings of Who Pays? go a long way toward explaining why so many states are failing to raise the amount of revenue needed to provide full and robust support for our public schools.
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blog January 9, 2024 In Most States, the Tax Code Makes Inequality Worse
The vast majority of state and local tax systems are upside-down, with the wealthy paying a far lesser share of their income in taxes than low- and middle-income families. Yet a few states have made strides to buck that trend and have tax codes that are somewhat progressive and therefore do not worsen inequality.
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brief November 7, 2023 Far From Radical: State Corporate Income Taxes Already Often Look Beyond the Water’s Edge
State lawmakers are increasingly interested in reforming their corporate tax bases to start from a comprehensive measure of worldwide profit. This provides a more accurate, and less gameable, starting point for calculating profits subject to state corporate tax. Mandating this kind of filing system, known as worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), would be transformative, as it would all but eliminate state corporate tax avoidance done through the artificial shifting of profits into low-tax countries.
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brief November 2, 2023 America Used to Have a Wealth Tax: The Forgotten History of the General Property Tax
Over time, broad wealth taxes were whittled away to become the narrower property taxes we have today. These selective wealth taxes apply to the kinds of wealth that make up a large share of middle-class families’ net worth (like homes and cars), but usually exempt most of the net worth of the wealthy (like business equity, bonds, and pooled investment funds).The rationale for this pared-back approach to wealth taxation has grown weaker in recent decades as inequality has worsened, the share of wealth held outside of real estate has increased, and the tools needed to administer a broad wealth tax have improved.
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ITEP Work in Action October 22, 2023 ITEP’s Carl Davis: Who Pays New Mexico Taxes?
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis gave a presentation on New Mexico’s tax system to that state’s Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee on October 19, 2023. Click here for the… -
map August 15, 2023 Does Your State Offer Tax Credits for Private K-12 School Voucher Contributions?
Twenty-one states provide public support to private and religious K-12 schools through school voucher tax credits.
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ITEP Work in Action August 8, 2023 Video: ITEP’s Carl Davis Presents ‘Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality’ at UPenn’s Wharton School
ITEP Research Director Carl Davis presents “Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality,” coauthored with ITEP’s Brakeyshia Samms, at the 2023 Pension Research Council Symposium “Diversity, Inclusion, and Inequality:… -
blog June 12, 2023 Illinois Voucher Tax Credits Don’t ‘Invest in Kids,’ They Invest in Inequality
By allowing their school privatization tax credit to expire at the end of the year, Illinois lawmakers can take a meaningful step toward better tax and education policy, and a clear show of support for our nation’s public education system.
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blog May 11, 2023 States are Talking About the Wrong Kind of Property Tax Cuts
Concerns over property tax affordability have been at the forefront this year as housing prices have climbed and property tax bills have often increased along with them. As lawmakers mull a range of property tax cuts, circuit breakers are the best possible approach—and these policies are receiving far too little attention in the states.
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report May 11, 2023 Preventing an Overload: How Property Tax Circuit Breakers Promote Housing Affordability
Circuit breaker credits are the most effective tool available to promote property tax affordability. These policies prevent a property tax “overload” by crediting back property taxes that go beyond a certain share of income. Circuit breakers intervene to ensure that property taxes do not swallow up an unreasonable portion of qualifying households’ budgets.
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map April 19, 2023 How is Adult-Use Cannabis Taxed by Your Local Government?
Twenty states have legalized the sale of cannabis for general adult use. Cannabis taxes vary considerably depending on local authority. Some states allow local governments to levy standalone excise taxes applying narrowly to cannabis purchases. Most local excise taxes on cannabis are levied in states that do not permit local governments to levy general sales taxes.