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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media mention March 25, 2020 American Prospect: Avoid Taxes, Receive Federal Bailouts
On that haul, they paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 2.3 percent. According to Matthew Gardner at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that rate is… -
blog March 10, 2020 COVID-19 Is No Excuse for Airline Industry or Any Other Corporate Tax Cut
Trump administration officials have reportedly floated the idea of including tax breaks for the airline industry in its package of COVID-19-related stimulus proposals, which would allow airline companies to defer income taxes into the future. This is an odd policy choice since most of the biggest airlines are already using deferral to zero out most or all of their federal income taxes on billions of dollars in profits.
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blog March 3, 2020 Administration Once Again Touts Misleading Information on 2017 Tax Law
The Trump administration has remained consistently on message about its 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. More than two years after the passage of the law, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin… -
media mention February 20, 2020 MarketWatch: Jeff Bezos spent more on this house in Beverly Hills than Amazon has paid so far in federal corporate income tax for 2019
Amazon listed a “summary” of its 2019 U.S. taxes as including $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes and customs duties, and more than $1.6 billion in state… -
media mention February 20, 2020 Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Tax reform may be more lucrative than advertised for corporations
Many of Minnesota’s major corporations paid lower tax rates in 2018 than new, dramatically lower corporate tax rates. That was among the findings in an analysis of government filings by… -
news release February 19, 2020 White House Advisors’ Push for Corporate ‘Minimum Tax’ Will Not Fix the Tax Law
A White House proposal to follow Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts with a minimum corporate tax would be like shooting a person on Fifth Avenue and then offering them a band aid.
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media mention February 7, 2020 Politifact: Fact-checking the Democratic claim that Amazon doesn’t pay taxes
Short answer: Amazon’s tax returns are private, so we don’t know for sure what Amazon pays in federal taxes. But Amazon’s estimates on its annual 10-K filings with the U.S.… -
media mention February 7, 2020 Yahoo! Finance: Amazon paid a 1.2% tax rate on $13,285,000,000 in profit for 2019
Matthew Gardner, senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), who analyzes corporations and their tax avoidance, says there’s “no meaningful” connection between Amazon and many of… -
media mention February 7, 2020 The Sun: AMAZON’S DIME Amazon paid just ONE per cent tax after making $13BILLION profit leaving taxpayers with jus $162million
One expert found ‘no meaningful’ link between Amazon and the tax payments in the SEC filing. Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote:… -
media mention February 7, 2020 Fox Business: Amazon paid tax rate of 1.2% on $13B in profits last year
“This means that instead of avoiding 100 percent of its income tax liability, Amazon appears to have avoided only 94 percent of its tax bill last year,” Matthew Gardner, senior fellow… -
media mention February 7, 2020 The Daily Mail: Amazon paid only $162M in US federal taxes in 2019 after making $13BILLION in profit – an effective rate of just one per cent
Taxes collected on behalf of the government for payroll and from online sales from third-party vendors don’t count as taxes paid. The expert wrote in a post made for the Institute… -
media mention February 6, 2020 International Business Times: Amazon Only Paid 1.2% Taxes In 2019 Despite $13 Billion Profit
Yahoo Finance, however, pointed that with the exception of the federal income tax, the listed amounts aren’t actually taxes Amazon paid to the federal government. There’s “no meaningful” connection between Amazon… -
media mention February 4, 2020 CNBC: Amazon had to pay federal income taxes for the first time since 2016 — here’s how much
However, paying something like payroll tax is hardly something to boast about, according to Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, a… -
media mention February 4, 2020 The Verge: Amazon finally owes federal income taxes this year — but we still don’t know how much it’s paying
t’s still, however, a low number compared to Amazon’s total profits. “It’s not fair to say [Amazon] paid nothing” on federal taxes anymore, says Matthew Gardner of the Institute on… -
blog January 31, 2020 From 0% to 1.2%: Amazon Lauds Its Minuscule Effective Federal Income Tax Rate
If we focus on the taxes the company paid in 2019, we see an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.2 percent. And since the company enjoyed federal income tax rebates in 2017 and 2018, this means that over the last three years Amazon has paid zero on $29 billion of U.S. pretax income.
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media mention January 31, 2020 Seattle Times: Amazon touts 2019 federal taxes, but the picture is complicated
So was Amazon’s 2019 U.S. federal income tax bill $1 billion or $162 million? The discrepancy stems from different financial statements companies prepare for tax authorities and investors, which recognize… -
media mention January 31, 2020 Gizmodo: Amazon’s Tax Claims Are Riddled with BS
According to Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, these numbers are, at best, misleading. “You look at the different types of taxes that… -
media mention January 27, 2020 Scroll.in: At the centre of the US government and Facebook’s tax dispute is the company’s Dublin office
If the IRS prevails in court, it could cost Facebook up to $9 billion more in taxes, based on estimates in the company’s securities filings. It would be a notable… -
blog January 24, 2020 GOP Legacy on IRS Administration: Auditing Mississippi, not Microsoft
Money doesn’t buy happiness—but it can buy immunity from the reach of Uncle Sam. The IRS is outgunned in cases against corporate giants because that’s how Republican leaders want it to be. They have systematically assaulted the agency’s enforcement capacity through decades of funding cuts. Instead of saving money, these cuts have cost billions: each dollar spent on the IRS results in several dollars of tax revenue collected.
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media mention January 23, 2020 ProPublica: Who’s Afraid of the IRS? Not Facebook
If the IRS prevails in court, it could cost Facebook up to $9 billion more in taxes, based on estimates in the company’s securities filings. It would be a notable… -
blog January 14, 2020 White House Council of Economic Advisers Crows about Lowest-Income Americans Being Infinitesimally “Wealthier”
When the White House Council of Economic Advisors last week tweeted that the poorest 50 percent of Americans’ wealth is growing 3 times faster than the wealth of the top 1 percent, we were skeptical. As it turns out, the CEA’s tweet is a reminder that the poorest 50 percent wealth grew twice as fast during Barack Obama’s second term than it has under Trump, but to this day remains far below its pre-recession share and significantly less than what it was 30 years ago.
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blog January 7, 2020 Guilty, Not GILTI: Unclear Whether Corps Continue to Lower Their Tax Bills Via Tax Haven Abuse
President Trump and GOP lawmakers often cited corporations’ abuse of tax havens, e.g. shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes, as justification for dramatically lowering the federal corporate tax rate under… -
media mention January 3, 2020 Public News Service: Report: Many Big Companies Pay Nothing Under New Tax Law
HELENA, Mont. – During the first year of the Trump administration’s new tax law, 91 Fortune 500 companies didn’t pay a dime in federal income tax. That’s according to a new… -
media mention January 3, 2020 Mother Jones: Chevron Made $4.5 Billion in 2018. So Why Did the IRS Give Them a Refund?
The largest chunk of Chevron’s $1.1 billion in tax breaks came in the form of tax deferral, a longstanding tax instrument that enables businesses to postpone paying taxes until a… -
media mention January 3, 2020 Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Industry Had Highest Federal Income Tax Rates in 2018
A big driver of the higher taxes in healthcare is a doomed Affordable Care Act fee on health insurers. The amount each insurer pays is based on premium revenue. President…