Two parts of Trump’s 2017 tax law that are particularly expensive and beneficial to the richest individuals are the changes in income tax rates and brackets and the special deduction for “pass-through” business owners. Lawmakers should not extend these provisions for high-income households past the end of this year, when they are scheduled to expire.
Joe Hughes
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blog March 26, 2025 Two Ways a 2025 Federal Tax Bill Could Worsen Income and Racial Inequality
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report March 3, 2025 High-Rent, Low-Wealth: Addressing the Racial Wealth Gap through a Federal Renter Credit
While the federal tax code has some policies focused on raising income of low earners, it contains fewer provisions designed specifically to address wealth inequality. A renter tax credit offers a simple, administratively practical means of reaching low-wealth populations through the federal tax code without requiring a comprehensive measurement of every household’s wealth.
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blog January 17, 2025 Congress Could — But Won’t — Pass a Tax Package That Pays for Itself
If Republican lawmakers were serious about deficit-neutral tax reform, they would focus on increasing taxes for the ultra-wealthy and large corporations. The absence of such proposals in their plan reveals their true priority: delivering enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while average working families receive crumbs.
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blog December 12, 2024 Defunding the IRS Would Cost Taxpayers
As Congress negotiates a bill for federal funding during the lame-duck session, lawmakers would be wise to remember that stripping funds from the IRS costs more than it saves. On the table in the appropriations bill is a $20 billion recission of funds to the nation’s tax administration. While this may look like a spending cut, it will increase deficits by $46 billion due to a drop in the agency’s capacity to enforce taxes on wealthy individuals owed under existing federal law.
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blog October 10, 2024 Fifteen Companies Each Avoided More than $1 Billion in Taxes from a Single Trump Tax Cut
The deduction for Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII), one of the tax cuts included in former President Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, provides a lower effective tax rate on income earned from intangible assets, such as patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property. Since the law went into effect in 2018, 15 corporations have separately reported more than $1 billion in tax benefits. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) reported the most, at more than $11 billion in tax breaks from 2018 to 2023. Other beneficiaries include large tech firms such as Meta, Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm.
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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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blog August 16, 2024 Here’s a Tip: Keep the Taxation of Tips As-Is
The no tax on tips idea isn’t a new one, but it’s always been abandoned because it’s practically impossible to do without creating new avenues for tax avoidance. Despite its embrace by the candidates from both major parties, this policy idea would do little to help the roughly 4 million people who work in tipped occupations while creating a host of problems.
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ITEP Work in Action April 12, 2024 Audio: ITEP’s Joe Hughes on the Need for a Well-Funded IRS
ITEP Federal Policy Analyst Joe Hughes appeared on the Oregon Center for Public Policy’s “Policy for the People” podcast, discussing IRS funding and Direct File. -
blog March 28, 2024 Congress Should Enhance – Not Diminish – IRS Capability this Tax Season
While funding cuts to the IRS may have been necessary as a political matter to avoid harmful agency shutdowns, they are severely misguided as a policy matter. By all serious accounts, cuts to IRS funding increase the deficit due to uncollected taxes – mostly from big businesses and the very wealthy.
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blog February 16, 2024 IRS Commissioner, New GAO Report Highlight Importance of Proper IRS Funding
A new GAO report and Commissioner Werfel’s testimony highlight the value and necessity of a well-funded and functioning IRS. Most families and businesses do their best to pay taxes accurately and on time. The nation benefits from a modern revenue agency that can make this process as easy and simple as possible and identify complex tax schemes that deprive the country of revenues.
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brief February 2, 2024 House SALT Proposal is Expensive, Unneeded, and Poorly Designed
The SALT Marriage Penalty Elimination Act passed by the House Rules Committee on February 1 is costly, decreasing tax revenue by about $8 billion in 2023.
It also mostly only helps taxpayers who are already well off. -
brief February 2, 2024 Impacts of the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act passed by the House of Representatives on January 31 is a compromise between lawmakers who want to address child poverty and… -
blog January 26, 2024 Three Things to Know This Tax Filing Season
The IRS Direct File pilot is currently open to eligible taxpayers here. Millions of American families have now received their W-2s for 2023, signaling the start to a new tax… -
brief January 16, 2024 Proposed Tax Deal Would Help Millions of Kids with Child Tax Credit Expansion While Extending Damaging Corporate Tax Breaks
On January 16, Congressional tax writers officially announced the details of a tax policy agreement. The deal includes expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to improve access for low-… -
blog November 8, 2023 Year-End Tax Package Must Prioritize Children and Families Over Corporations and Private Equity
While Congress considers extending expired tax provisions, it should first and foremost focus on expanding the Child Tax Credit, a policy with a proven track record of helping families and children.
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blog October 24, 2023 Intuit Receives Millions in Federal Subsidies While Arguing IRS Direct File Would Be Too Costly
The tax preparation industry has for years lobbied to prevent the IRS from providing a tool that would allow Americans to file their taxes online for free. Recent public disclosures… -
blog September 29, 2023 The IRS Shouldn’t Be Lawmakers’ Sacrificial Lamb
Last year, Congress reversed decades of funding cuts to the IRS to help the agency improve taxpayer services and crack down on wealthy tax cheats through the Inflation Reduction Act.… -
blog September 27, 2023 Government Shutdown is Rooted in Hypocrisy, Dysfunction, and, As Always, Tax Cuts for the Rich
The priorities in this shutdown drama couldn’t be clearer. House Republicans once again threaten the financial security of the millions of Americans to exact cuts to programs like Head Start, the Social Security Administration, and the EPA – all while seeking unaffordable tax cuts for multinational corporations, the wealthy, and foreign investors.
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blog September 12, 2023 Lapse of Expanded Child Tax Credit Led to Unprecedented Rise in Child Poverty
The new Census data should provide both concern and optimism for lawmakers. The steep rise in child poverty is an inexcusable tragedy. But it shows that child poverty is avoidable when Congress makes the decision to make tax policy for those who need the hand up rather than for the rich and powerful.
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report August 29, 2023 Expanding the Child Tax Credit Would Advance Racial Equity in the Tax Code
Expanding the federal Child Tax Credit to 2021 levels would help nearly 60 million children next year. It would help the lowest-income children the most and would particularly help children and families of color.
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blog August 14, 2023 Celebrating One Year Since the Landmark Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act was a course correction from decades of tax cuts that primarily went to the richest Americans and left the rest of us with budget shortfalls that conservative lawmakers now seek to plug with cuts to Social Security and Medicare. For the first time in generations we are finally asking those who have benefited the most from our economy to contribute back.
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report July 11, 2023 ‘Fair Share Act’ Would Strengthen Medicare and Social Security Taxes
The Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act would reform the taxes that Americans pay to finance these two important programs so that the richest 2 percent of Americans pay these taxes on most of their income the way that middle-class taxpayers already do.
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brief June 13, 2023 Expanding the Child Tax Credit Would Help Nearly 60 Million Kids, Especially Those in Families with Low Incomes
Restoring the federal Child Tax Credit to 2021 levels would benefit nearly 60 million children. Three-quarters of the benefit would go to families in the bottom three quintiles, consisting of households with less than $86,600 in income.
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blog May 9, 2023 The House’s Debt Ceiling Smoke Screen: The GOP Budget Plan Gives Cover for Tax Cuts for the Rich
While it isn’t reasonable in the first place for Congress to debate whether it will pay the bills it has already incurred, some of the same lawmakers who are holding the economy hostage to exact budget cuts have decided to make the conversation even more irrational by proposing to increase deficits with tax cuts that enrich the already rich.
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report May 4, 2023 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: National and State-by-State Estimates
The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.