The tax proposals from Vice President Kamala Harris would, on average, lead to a tax increase for the richest 1 percent of Americans and a tax cut for all other income groups.
Steve Wamhoff
Steve Wamhoff is ITEP’s director of federal tax policy. In this role, he is responsible for setting the organization’s federal research and policy agenda. He is the author of numerous reports and analyses of federal tax policies as well as in-depth policy briefs that outline how the federal income tax and corporate tax code can be overhauled to improve tax fairness.
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report October 23, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Kamala Harris’ Tax Plan
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media mention October 7, 2024 New York Times: Trump’s Plans Could Increase U.S. Debt While Raising Costs for Most Americans
Former President Donald J. Trump’s economic proposals could inflame the nation’s debt burden while ultimately raising costs for a vast majority of Americans, according to a pair of new economic… -
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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report September 13, 2024 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: Updated National and State-by-State Estimates
The TCJA Permanency Act would make permanent the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that are set to expire at the end of 2025. The legislation… -
report July 16, 2024 Corporate Tax Breaks Contribute to Income and Racial Inequality and Shift Resources to Foreign Investors
Corporate tax cuts and corporate tax avoidance worsen income and racial inequality in our country. Most of the benefits flow to foreign investors and the richest 20% of Americans.
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report June 27, 2024 Who Benefits and Who Pays: How Corporate Tax Breaks Drive Inequality
Corporate tax breaks and corporate tax avoidance significantly contribute to income and racial inequality and largely benefit foreign investors.
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blog June 20, 2024 SCOTUS Rejects Expansion of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts, Leaves Broader Tax Questions for Another Day
The Supreme Court matters, for tax fairness as for every other part of our lives. Whether or not we ever have a government that taxes billionaires as much as it taxes the rest of us will depend on how the Supreme Court rules in the future and who appoints justices to the Court.
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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 American Prospect: The $6 Trillion Decision
Enormous amounts of presidential election messaging and coverage will unfurl between now and November 5. You will surely hear a lot about abortion, immigration, and inflation. You will hear about a fight for the future of American democracy. Even more likely, you’ll hear about polls, strategies to attract working-class and minority voters, or what one candidate said or tweeted or posted, or designated a surrogate to say or tweet or post. Oh, and court cases. Lots and lots of court cases. What you might not hear as much about are the stakes of the election’s outcome for all the money in the country. On Tax Day, of all days, it seems like a good time to lay that out.
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report April 9, 2024 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2024
America’s tax system is just barely progressive, and not nearly as progressive as many suggest or as progressive as it could be. There is plenty of room for lawmakers to improve the progressivity of the tax code to combat economic, wealth, and racial inequality.
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report March 12, 2024 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan
President Biden’s most recent budget plan includes proposals that would raise more than $5 trillion from high-income individuals and corporations over a decade. Like the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, it would partly reverse the Trump tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals, clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, and require the wealthiest individuals to pay taxes on their capital gains income just as they are required to for other types of income, among other reforms.
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blog March 7, 2024 Tax Proposals Expected to be in President Biden’s Budget Plan
President Biden discussed multiple tax proposals during the State of the Union address to Congress. Several of these proposals appeared in the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year,… -
media mention March 7, 2024 Washington Post: Biden: Ban Deductions for Firms Paying Executives More Than $1 Million
President Biden will call for blocking corporations from deducting the costs of paying salaries over $1 million from their federal taxes in Thursday night’s State of the Union address, part of populist-oriented… -
media mention March 4, 2024 The Guardian: Private Equity Prepares for a Boon From Congress
Some of largest and most profitable companies in the US are primed to save billions of dollars from a congressional tax deal that critics say gives “billions in tax credits to the biggest corporations while giving pennies to middle-class children and families”. And private equity funds could be among the deal’s biggest beneficiaries, a Guardian analysis suggests. The tax cuts passed the House of Representatives at the end of January as part of an agreement that pairs handouts for businesses with a moderate expansion of the child tax credit. The Senate could vote on the bill over the coming weeks, and the White House has indicated that Joe Biden would sign it into law.
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media mention March 4, 2024 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: PNC Bank, PPG Industries Among Companies Paying Less Than the Federal Tax Rate
WASHINGTON — More than a dozen Pennsylvania companies — including a handful in the Pittsburgh area — paid less than the 21% federal corporate income tax rate from 2018 to 2022, according to a study released Thursday by a progressive research group.
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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 February 21, 2024 The Hill: Trump Tax Cuts on the Line in 2024 Election
The 2017 Trump tax cuts are on the line in the election this year, with Republicans hoping a sweep of Congress and the White House will allow them to extend the former president’s signature law. Democrats opposed the law when Trump was in power but have supported extending certain cuts, such as the decreased tax rates for people making less than $400,000 a year. Democrats do not want a blanket extension, which would cost nearly $4 trillion over the next decade.
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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… -
report January 17, 2024 Ongoing Use of Offshore Tax Havens Demonstrates the Need for the Global Minimum Tax
Key Findings To avoid taxation, American corporations use accounting gimmicks that make profits appear to be earned in foreign jurisdictions which tax corporate profits very lightly or not at all.… -
media mention January 17, 2024 Yahoo Finance: Lawmakers Ink a Bipartisan Tax Deal to Expand the Child Tax Credit
A powerful bipartisan duo announced a significant tax deal Tuesday that would combine a temporary expansion of the child tax credit with long-sought provisions for the business world. Read more. -
media mention January 17, 2024 Axios: Bipartisan Deal Would Expand Child Tax Credit, Lift Half-Million Children Out of Poverty
Congressional committee chairs reached a deal Tuesday that would expand the federal child tax credit, after three years of pushing by Democrats and progressives. Read more. -
media mention January 12, 2024 The Guardian: US Corporations Push to Roll Back Trump-Era Tax Policies They Once Endorsed
An agreement is emerging that ties the corporate tax breaks to an increase in support for vulnerable American families. Read more. -
media mention January 12, 2024 Washington Post: Behind Closed Doors, Trump Eyes Second Round of Corporate tax Cuts
Donald Trump’s campaign team says the former president would prioritize cutting taxes for working-class families and small businesses if he returns to the White House. But privately, Trump has told… -
media mention January 11, 2024 Washington Post: Congress Nears Deal to Partially Restore Biden’s Expanded Child Tax Credit
Congressional lawmakers are closing in on a deal that would partially revive President Biden’s expanded tax credit for lower-income families in exchange for extending tax incentives favored by business interests,… -
blog December 21, 2023 Everything You Need to Know About Proposals to Better Tax Billionaires
Tax policy may not be on the minds of most Americans during the final weeks of 2023, but billionaires with an eye on their own tax bills have been riveted by developments in D.C.