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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media mention April 6, 2020 CNBC: When Will the Money Arrive
Right now, the answer is that you will still get a stimulus payment. But that may have to wait until you eventually file your 2020 tax return next spring. “Anything… -
blog March 31, 2020 House Democrats’ Suggestion of Retroactively Repealing SALT Cap is a Poor Emergency Relief Measure
The House Democrats have plenty of ideas to help workers and families and boost the economy, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent idea to repeal the cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) is not one of them. The 2017 Trump-GOP tax law includes many provisions that should be repealed. Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats have long made it clear that they want to start by repealing the $10,000 cap on SALT deductions, which is one of the law’s few provisions that restrict tax breaks for the rich.
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blog March 25, 2020 How the Tax Rebate in the Senate’s Bill Compares to Other Proposals
Congress is poised to pass a $2 trillion plan that includes $150 billion in fiscal aid to states, $150 billion in health care spending, large expansions of unemployment compensation and more. These measures are clearly needed as the economy teeters on the brink. As the Senate votes on its stimulus/COVID19 bill, one provision ITEP has deeper insights on is the payments to households in the form of tax rebates. ITEP has provided several analyses over the past few days showing that the rebate in the current bill is an improvement over a previous GOP proposal but still falls short of the benefits offered under Democratic proposals.
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blog March 24, 2020 NEW ANALYSIS: House Democratic Stimulus Bill Explained
Breaking ITEP analysis explains how a newly-introduced House Democrats’ proposal—far more comprehensive and better targeted than the recently failed GOP Senate bill—combines overdue expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit with direct rebates to reach workers and families across all income groups.
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blog March 23, 2020 New State-by-State Estimates: Modified Senate GOP Stimulus Bill Still Falls Short
The GOP Senate stimulus bill voted down yesterday is a slight improvement over the first GOP proposal released Thursday, but it still fails to prioritize workers and families or provide fast relief to those who need it most.
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blog March 20, 2020 Why the GOP Senate Bill Fails to Address the Crisis, and Why a Democratic Bill Looks More Promising
National and state-by-state data available for download By Steve Wamhoff and Meg Wiehe On Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a bill that reportedly cost more than $1… -
media mention March 19, 2020 CNBC: A tale of two coronavirus relief efforts: One for the rich, one for the poor
Two financial-relief measures the Trump administration is weighing to fight the economic scourge of the coronavirus would have drastically different impacts on the rich and poor, according to a new… -
blog March 17, 2020 Checks to All vs. Trump’s Payroll Tax Cut
A payroll tax cut would help those lucky enough to keep their job and would provide a bigger break to those with more earnings. Sending checks to every household would be a far more effective economic stimulus because it would immediately put money in the hands of everyone who would likely spend it right away, pumping it back into the economy.
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blog March 13, 2020 New ITEP Report on President’s Misguided Payroll Tax Proposal
Earlier this week, ITEP analyzed what would happen if Congress and the President repeated the 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax that was enacted for two years… -
report March 13, 2020 Trump’s Proposed Payroll Tax Elimination
President Trump has proposed to eliminate payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare through the end of the year. ITEP estimates that this would cost $843 billion and 65 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 20 percent of taxpayers, as illustrated in the table below.
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blog March 10, 2020 Trump’s Proposed Payroll Tax Cut Is Not the Right Answer
The Trump administration is floating a cut in the Social Security payroll tax as a measure to counteract a potential economic downturn related to the COVID-19 virus. It should go without saying that a public health crisis requires government interventions that have nothing to do with taxes. But even if policymakers want to find ways to stimulate the economy beyond solving the health crisis, the payroll tax cut is not likely to be very effective.
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media mention March 4, 2020 Market Watch: This is how much American workers saved during the first year after Trump tax overhaul
Focusing on personal taxes didn’t tell the whole story, according to Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP. “The… -
blog March 2, 2020 The Latest Wildly Misleading Argument Against Taxing the Rich
Anti-tax activists’ convoluted claims that the rich pay too much in taxes broke new ground with an op-ed published last week in the Wall Street Journal. Penned by former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and John Early, a former official of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the piece is particularly misleading. The so-called evidence in support of their argument against raising taxes on the rich fails to correctly calculate effective tax rates.
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media mention February 25, 2020 The Hill: Financial trade tax gains traction with 2020 Democrats
Democratic presidential candidates across the ideological spectrum are calling for taxes on financial trades, breathing new life into an idea that for many years was promoted primarily in progressive circles.… -
blog February 21, 2020 Tax Cuts Floated by White House Advisors Are an Attempt to Deflect from TCJA’s Failings
Now that multiple data points reveal the current administration, which promised to look out for the common man, is, in fact, presiding over an upward redistribution of wealth, the public is being treated to pasta policymaking in which advisors are conducting informal public opinion polling by throwing tax-cut ideas against the wall to see if any stick. But the intent behind these ideas is as transparent as a glass noodle.
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blog February 19, 2020 How Democratic Presidential Candidates Would Raise Revenue
One of the biggest problems with the U.S. tax code in terms of fairness is that investment income, which mostly flows to the rich, is taxed less than the earned income that makes up all or almost all of the income that working people live on.
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media mention February 12, 2020 Yahoo! Finance: In Search of the ‘Disappearing Corporate Income Tax’
Those losses, driven by generous rule-writing and interpretations of the 2017 tax law by the U.S. Treasury, are so substantial that they were deemed “tax cuts 2.0” by the liberal-leaning… -
blog February 12, 2020 Hearing Witness: Trump Administration Giving Tax Breaks Not Allowed by Law
The Treasury Department, tasked with issuing regulations to implement the hastily drafted Trump-GOP tax law, is concocting new tax breaks that are not provided in the law. This is the short version of what we learned while watching Tuesday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax.”
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blog February 11, 2020 Why Today’s Congressional Hearing on “The Disappearing Corporate Income Tax” Is Imperative
The United States is collecting a historically low level of tax revenue from corporations. In 2018, corporate tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product (the nation’s economic output)… -
blog February 10, 2020 President Trump’s 2021 Budget: Promises Made, Promises Broken
President Trump has kept only one of his promises–his pledge to lower taxes for corporations and their investors.
The budget plan he released today again breaks his promise to reject cuts in Medicaid that would affect millions of people. His budget once again fails to eliminate the deficit, much the less the national debt, during his presidency as he promised. It cuts trillions from safety net programs and student aid programs despite his pledge to stand for forgotten Americans.
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blog February 4, 2020 Trump Already Did Tax Cuts 2.0… For Corporations
If President Trump puts forth another tax proposal this year, as he is hinting, it will be his third. The second round, already costing the U.S. Treasury billions, was implemented largely out of the public’s view.
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media mention January 17, 2020 McClatchy: Lifting the Cap on This Tax Break Would Benefit California’s Rich
The figures were developed by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. to project the likely effects if the Democrats’ proposal went into effect in 2022. That’s likely the… -
blog January 15, 2020 The 2013 Biden-McConnell “Fiscal Cliff” Deal Shows Why the Next President Needs a New Approach to Taxes
Americans have long wanted more progressive tax policies and have told pollsters for years that they want wealthy individuals and big corporations to pay more, not less, in taxes. The only way forward is for lawmakers and the next president to take a dramatically different approach to tax policy.
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blog January 13, 2020 Time to Throw Cucumbers
A basic understanding and idea of fairness is a trait we share with intelligent primates, which is precisely why more than two years ago as Congress was debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the American public disapproved of the tax bill.
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media mention January 6, 2020 Capital and Main: Two Years Later: What Has Trump’s Tax Law Delivered?
Promise: “We’re also going to eliminate tax breaks and complex loopholes taken advantage [of] by the wealthy.” – President Trump, November 29, 2017. Reality: The law kept tax loopholes in place and added new…