Tesla’s income tax avoidance is still in the news, and that’s a good thing.
Matthew Gardner
Matt Gardner is a senior fellow at ITEP where he has worked since 1998. He previously served as ITEP’s executive director from 2006 to 2016. Matt’s work focuses on federal, state and local tax systems, with a particular emphasis on the impact of tax policies on low- and moderate-income taxpayers. He uses ITEP’s microsimulation model to produce economic projections and analyses on the effects of current and proposed federal and state tax and budget policies.
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blog April 4, 2025 What the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Got Wrong About Tesla’s Tax Avoidance
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brief March 28, 2025 Advantaging Affluence: A Distributional Analysis of Missouri HB 798’s Uneven Tax Cuts for Wealth and Work
Missouri House Bill 798 would reduce personal and corporate income tax rates, fully eliminate taxes on capital gains income from sale of assets, and eliminates the state’s modest Earned Income Tax Credit that assists many working people in lower-paid jobs. HB 798 would radically transform Missouri’s income tax code into a system that privileges income from wealth over income from work, leaving many middle-income families to pay a higher income tax rate than wealthy people living off their investments.
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blog March 26, 2025 Why Americans Are Right to Be Unhappy About Corporate Tax Avoidance
If lawmakers wanted to reduce income inequality and racial inequality, shutting down or at least limiting corporate tax breaks would be one option to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, President Trump and the current Congress show little interest in this and may even move in the opposite direction by introducing new corporate tax breaks.
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media mention March 17, 2025 Audio: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Discusses Maryland’s Tax and Budget Debate on WYPR
As the 2025 General Assembly reaches its midway point, the most pressing issue facing lawmakers is the state’s budget deficit. ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner joined Midday to share the details… -
media mention March 10, 2025 Business Insider: Starbucks Likely Avoided Taxes on $1.3 billion in Profit Using a Swiss Subsidiary, a New Report Finds
A little-known Starbucks subsidiary in Switzerland appears to have played a big role in how much the coffee chain paid over the last decade in taxes, according to a new report. On paper, Starbucks Coffee Trading Company, or SCTC, based in the Swiss Canton of Vaud, is responsible for sourcing unroasted coffee from countries like Colombia and Rwanda before it’s used in beverages at Starbucks’ cafés. It also oversees Starbucks’ Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices program for ethical coffee sourcing.
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media mention March 3, 2025 Video: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Discusses Worldwide Combined Reporting with Yes! Magazine
ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner recently spoke to Sonali Kolhatkar about how worldwide combined reporting can be used to crack down on corporate tax avoidance. You can watch the full… -
ITEP Work in Action February 27, 2025 Testimony: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Discusses How to Improve Maryland’s Tax Code at House Ways & Means Committee Hearing
ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner submitted the written testimony below to Maryland’s House Ways & Means Committee on February 20, 2025. Video of his oral testimony is at the bottom… -
report February 20, 2025 A Revenue Analysis of Worldwide Combined Reporting in the States
Universal adoption of mandatory worldwide combined reporting would boost state corporate income tax revenues by roughly 14 percent. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia would experience revenue increases totaling $19.1 billion.
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blog February 11, 2025 The Five Biggest Corporations Represented at Trump’s Inauguration Could Save $75 Billion from One Tax Break Before Congress
New financial reports indicate five of America’s biggest corporations—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla—could win $75 billion in tax breaks if Congress and the President satisfy demands from corporate lobbyists to reinstate a provision repealed under the 2017 Trump tax law.
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blog January 30, 2025 Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $2 Billion of U.S. Income in 2024
Tesla reported $2.3 billion of U.S. income in 2024 but paid zero federal income tax. Over the past three years, the Elon Musk-led company reports $10.8 billion of U.S. income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million.
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report October 7, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
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.
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media mention August 5, 2024 ProPublica: How a Washington Tax Break for Data Centers Snowballed Into One of the State’s Biggest Corporate Giveaways
In 2010, as the country still reeled from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, tech companies, real estate developers and rural lobbyists went to the state Capitol in Olympia, Washington, to press for a tax break for data centers.
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media mention June 18, 2024 Marketplace: Closing a $50 Billion Tax Loophole for the Wealthy
The Treasury and IRS announced a new initiative Monday to close a tax loophole for wealthy people that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade. Plus, the evolving economics of “gayborhoods” in U.S. cities.
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report May 2, 2024 Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018.
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media mention April 15, 2024 The Lever: Pfizer’s Massive Tax Dodge
While jacking up drug prices, Pfizer recently reported more than $27 billion in revenue from its U.S. sales in 2023. But the Big Pharma titan owes nothing in federal income taxes, despite being one of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world. That’s largely thanks to existing loopholes and a 2017 tax law signed by former President Donald Trump.
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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… -
media mention March 4, 2024 HuffPost: America’s Largest Companies Dodged Nearly $300 Billion In Taxes, Report Finds
The country’s largest companies dodged more than $275 billion in federal corporate income taxes from 2018 to 2022, a new report from the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds. The report examined corporate income taxes paid by 342 of the country’s largest companies from 2018 to 2022, the latest year for which companies have reported their earnings. All of them were profitable in all five years covered by the report.
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media mention March 4, 2024 The Guardian: Trump Gave Top US Firms Staggering Tax Cuts, With Some Paying $0 or less – Report
Some of the US’s most profitable corporations, including General Motors, Citigroup and Netflix, have slashed their tax bills in the years since the passage of the Trump tax cuts, with nearly a quarter paying rates in the single digits and 23 paying nothing, a report has found. The 2017 law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. But the new assessment of corporate tax avoidance, published on Thursday by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), found that during the first five years the law was in effect, many profitable public companies in the US paid a far lower rate in practice.
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report February 29, 2024 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.
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media mention January 2, 2024 Marketplace: The IRS is Trying a Free Online Tax-Filing System That Cuts Out Vendors
It’s January, which means you’ll be able to file your 2023 tax returns soon. And this year the IRS is trying something new: Some taxpayers in 12 states will be able… -
media mention December 23, 2023 The Lever: Billionaire Gifts To Thomas: Generosity Or Taxable Income?
If billionaires’ largesse was designed to keep the justice on the high court, experts say the money could be considered a taxable payment. Read more. -
media mention December 15, 2023 Reuters: Exxon’s Low US Tax Payments Ruffle Biden’s Climate Agenda
Exxon Mobil’s income tax payments to the U.S. government have dropped to 3% over the past five years – several times below the company’s 20-year average – on massive deductions… -
media mention December 6, 2023 CNBC: Supreme Court Hears Tax Case On ‘Income’
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday on a case that could affect broad swaths of the U.S. tax code and federal revenue. Read more. -
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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blog October 25, 2023 On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Critics Take Aim at ITEP – and Miss
In identifying companies that avoid taxes, ITEP presented evidence that our federal corporate income tax was not working the way most Americans think it should work. The public and lawmakers paid attention, including President Biden who then made the case that this demonstrated the need for reform. As a result, Congress enacted the corporate minimum tax, to make the tax system a bit closer to what most Americans want it to be. If you look closely at this, you might just see an example of democracy working.