Steve Wamhoff

media mention April 24, 2019
Bloomberg: Want to Make Millions and Pay No Taxes? Try Real Estate

“There’s a general rule that you’re not supposed to be able to claim losses for more than you put into a deal,” says Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy…
media mention April 15, 2019
CNN: Four Ways Trump’s Tax Cuts Changed the Economy

Congress has yet to take up spending cuts to big-ticket items like Medicare and Social Security that the White House had proposed to curb deficits. Still, mounting debt makes conversations…
media mention April 13, 2019
The Intercept: Don’t Fall for the Right’s Favorite Lie About Taxes

So what does the overall U.S. tax system look like when you take all of this into account? The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, a progressive Washington,…
media mention April 12, 2019
Think Progress: Trump Tax ‘Cut’ Actually Increased Taxes for 10 Million American Families, Report Finds

The Center for American Progress released its calculations on Friday, based on data from the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It found that 10,260,263 American families saw a…
media mention April 12, 2019
Yahoo! Finance: Not Just Amazon: 60 Big Companies Paid $0 in Taxes under Trump Law

Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP),…
report April 11, 2019
Who Pays Taxes in America in 2019?

For years, Americans have been told that the rich are paying a highly disproportionate share of the nation’s taxes. Claims to that effect often focus on just one tax, the federal personal income tax, which is indeed progressive overall. But when the nation’s tax system is viewed in its entirety, it becomes clear that the reality is very different. Despite their enormous incomes and wealth, the nation’s richest taxpayers are paying a share of overall taxes that slightly exceeds their share of income.
report April 11, 2019
Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Tax Law

For decades, profitable Fortune 500 companies have been able to manipulate the tax system to avoid paying even a dime in tax on billions of dollars in U.S. profits. This ITEP report provides the first comprehensive look at how the new corporate tax laws that took effect after the passage of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affects the scale of corporate tax avoidance.
blog April 10, 2019
The Working Families Tax Relief Act Would Boost Incomes and Economic Security for Workers and Children

Sens. Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, Richard Durbin, and Ron Wyden (along with the backing of most of the Democratic caucus in the Senate) today rolled out a new proposal to expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Called the Working Families Tax Relief Act (WFTRA), the proposal would provide a substantial benefit, especially to low-income working families.
media mention April 9, 2019
Fast Company: Soak the Rich but How?

“Right now, the personal income tax has all kinds of special breaks,” says Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, who…
media mention April 3, 2019
New York Times: A Man with a Plan for Inequality

Their largest holdings often include stocks. Which means that the lower tax rate on capital gains, combined with the deferral of taxing them, has enormous financial consequences, as Steve Wamhoff,…
media mention April 3, 2019
CNBC: What the Wyden-Proposed Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains Might mean for You

Marking an asset to market means that you’re treating it as if you’ve sold it for fair market value at the end of the year, accounting for the gain or…
blog April 2, 2019
Sweeping Reform Would Tax Capital Gains Like Ordinary Income

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, announced that he would soon release a proposal to eliminate massive tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthy on their capital gains income. If successful, the proposal would ensure that income from wealth is taxed just like income from work.
media mention April 2, 2019
Bloomberg: Key Democrat Revives Plan to Make Capital Gains Tax Due Annually

And Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the bill “would certainly slow down the ability of billionaires to…
February 28, 2019

Americans have long wanted progressive taxes but few, if any, lawmakers publicly backed this view. What’s happening now isn’t a shift in public opinion, rather it’s Washington finally catching up…
media mention February 20, 2019
New York Observer: Amazon Paid $0 in Federal Taxes Despite Making $11 Billion in 2018—And No One Knows Why

You may feel like a champion financial planner after filing last year’s income taxes, even though you did pay a hefty fee to an accountant or some tax software. But…
media mention February 16, 2019
Yahoo! Finance: Amazon Will Pay $0 in Taxes on $11,200,000,000 in Profit for 2018

“It’s hard to know exactly what they’re doing,” said Steve Wamhoff, ITEP’s Director of Federal Tax Policy. “In their public documents they don’t lay out their tax strategy. So it’s unclear exactly which breaks [the company is taking advantage of]. They vaguely say tax credits. One could think of many different ways a corporation could do this, like the depreciation breaks which were expanded under TCJA.”
report February 14, 2019
The Illusion of Race-Neutral Tax Policy

It is well known that the bulk of the federal tax cuts flowed to the highest-earning households, who received the largest tax cut both in terms of real dollars and also as a share of income. But as our analysis with Prosperity Now reveals, solely examining the tax law in the context of class misses a bigger-picture story about how the nation’s public policies not only perpetuate widening income and wealth inequality, they also preserve historic and current injustices that continue to allow white communities to build wealth while denying the same level of opportunity (and often suppressing it) to communities of color.
blog February 13, 2019
SALT Deduction Cap Should be Reformed, Not Repealed

On Monday a group of Senators and Representatives from the Northeast announced their latest proposal to repeal the cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), this time offsetting the costs by restoring the top personal income tax rate to 39.6 percent.

This is an improvement over previous proposals to repeal the cap on SALT deductions without offsetting the costs at all. But the new approach does not improve our tax system overall. Instead, it trades one tax cut for the rich (a lower top income tax rate) for another (repeal of the cap on SALT deductions).
February 6, 2019
Shared Prosperity: A Progressive Approach to Marginal Tax Rates

Panel: In recent years, economists have been engaged in robust academic debate over the top marginal tax rate, with leading researchers estimating the optimal rate to be 73 percent or even higher. Yet despite widespread public support for raising the rate from its current level of 37 percent, many policymakers and media figures have demonstrated misunderstandings over what marginal tax rates are and how they work.
blog February 5, 2019
New ITEP Report Shows How Congress Can Meet Public Demand for Progressive Taxes

A recent headline tells us that bold tax plans proposed by lawmakers today reflect a “profound shift in public mood.” But, in fact, the public’s mood has not changed at all. Americans have long wanted progressive taxes but few, if any, lawmakers publicly backed this view. What’s happening now isn’t a shift in public opinion, rather it’s Washington finally catching up with the American people.
media mention February 5, 2019
Washington Post: Live Commentary on Trump’s SOTU

E.J. DIONNE JR., 9:27 p.m.: “A massive tax cut for working families.” Really? “If you look at the richest 1 percent, they’re getting more than the bottom 60 percent of…
report February 5, 2019
Progressive Revenue-Raising Options

America has long needed a more equitable tax code that raises enough revenue to invest in building shared prosperity. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), enacted at the end of 2017, moved the federal tax code in the opposite direction, reducing revenue by $1.9 trillion over a decade, opening new loopholes, and providing its most significant benefits to the well-off. The law cut taxes on the wealthy directly by reducing their personal income taxes and estate taxes, and indirectly by reducing corporate taxes.
report February 1, 2019
Congress Should Reduce, Not Expand, Tax Breaks for Capital Gains

Even though income derived from capital gains receives a special lower tax rate and is therefore undertaxed, some proponents of lower taxes on the wealthy claim that capital gains are overtaxed due to the effects of inflation. But existing tax breaks for capital gains more than compensate for any problem related to inflation. Congress should repeal or restrict special tax provisions for capital gains rather than creating even more breaks.
media mention January 28, 2019
The Hill: Warren Stakes out Ground with Wealth Tax Proposal

Steve Wamhoff, director of tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said middle-income Americans are essentially already taxed on their wealth because most of it is in…
media mention January 24, 2019
Politico: Let’s Talk Wealth Tax

Steve Wamhoff at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy projects that a wealth tax could raise well over $1 trillion in a decade, and notes that wealth inequality far…