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 June 26, 2023 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Next Tax Debates are Heating Up in Congress
Call it the battle of the tax cuts. Western Pennsylvania’s lawmakers are on opposite sides as the U.S. House debates whether — and how — to cut taxes. Read more. -
blog June 22, 2023 Congressional Republicans Distort a New Report on the Global Minimum Tax
The notion that we are better off allowing our corporations to pretend their profits are earned in the Cayman Islands or Ireland simply defies logic and the facts. There is no scenario in which the U.S. would be better by ditching the international agreement that the government already negotiated.
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media mention June 15, 2023 Salon: GOP Follows Debt Fight with Bill to Give $24 billion Tax Cut to the Top 1 Percent
After spending months threatening to tank the economy over the federal deficit, Republicans have unveiled a set of new tax proposals that would cost the government billions of dollars —… -
brief June 11, 2023 Trio of GOP Tax Bills Would Expand Corporate Tax Breaks While Doing Little for Americans Who Most Need Help
The trio of tax bills that cleared the House Ways and Means Committee in June include tax cuts that would mostly benefit the richest one percent of Americans and foreign investors.
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blog May 25, 2023 Congress Should Consider Attaching Work Requirements to the Biggest Tax Break for the Rich
Instead of focusing on low-income people who are already mostly employed or facing significant barriers to employment, lawmakers who want to encourage labor force participation should revisit existing tax breaks subsidizing wealthy individuals who live off their assets rather than work.
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media mention May 22, 2023 Washington Post: How California’s Wild Weather Brought the Debt-Ceiling ‘X Date’ Closer
As President Biden and lawmakers scramble to strike a debt ceiling deal before the government runs out of money, each day counts — to the tune of about $17 billion. That’s how… -
blog May 9, 2023 Congress Should Raise Taxes on the Rich, But That’s a Totally Separate Issue from the Debt Ceiling
Congress absolutely should raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to generate revenue and improve the fairness of our tax code. President Biden has several proposals to do exactly that. But this is an entirely separate question from whether we should raise the debt ceiling to honor the debts the nation has already incurred and avoid an economic apocalypse.
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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.
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report March 10, 2023 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Plan
President Biden’s latest budget proposal includes trillions of dollars of new revenue that would be paid by the richest Americans, both directly through increases in personal income, Medicare and estate taxes, and indirectly through increases in corporate income taxes.
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media mention March 10, 2023 MarketWatch: Biden’s Tax Hikes for the Rich are Unlikely to Pass. The Bigger Debate: Trump-era Tax Cuts that End in 2025.
For five years, most Americans have seen lower income-tax rates and tapped a bigger standard deduction, but without congressional action before the end of 2025, the rules could still revert… -
blog February 14, 2023 The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act Is Needed More than Ever
The new corporate minimum tax enacted as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act will address some of the worst corporate tax dodging, but what else is needed? A group of Democrats have answered this question with the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act.
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media mention February 7, 2023 Wall Street Journal: Top GOP Tax Legislator Says He’ll Boost Workers, Probe Companies
Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.), the House’s new top tax writer, is promoting an approach he says would favor working-class Americans over large corporations, a shift in tone from his predecessors that… -
blog January 13, 2023 GAO Report Confirms: Trump Tax Law Cut Corporate Taxes to Rock Bottom
A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds the average effective federal income tax rate paid by large, profitable corporations fell to 9 percent in the first year the Trump tax law was in effect, and the share of such companies paying nothing at all rose to 34 percent that year.
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blog January 11, 2023 “Fair Tax” Plan Would Abolish the IRS and Shift Federal Taxes from the Wealthy to the Rest of Us
The “Fair Tax” bill would impose a 30 percent federal sales tax on everything we buy – groceries, cars, homes, health care – and lead to a giant tax shift from the well-off to everyone else.
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blog December 14, 2022 Guide to a Potential Year-End Tax Bill in Congress
Any tax legislation enacted before this Congress ends should prioritize policies that have a proven track record of helping workers and children rather than policies that cut taxes for corporations or for individuals who are already well-off. It’s not clear right now whether lawmakers will do that – or whether they will enact any tax legislation at all before the year ends, but here we take a look at the key tax issues that lawmakers are discussing.
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blog December 8, 2022 Lawmakers Seek to Extend Tax Break for “Research” that Corporations Use to Develop Frozen Foods, New Beer Flavors, Casino Games and Tax Avoidance
If Congress creates a tax break to encourage businesses to conduct research that benefits society, should Netflix be eligible for it? There is no shame in binge-watching Stranger Things or… -
blog December 6, 2022 Reversing the Stricter Limit on Interest Deductions: Another Huge Tax Break for Private Equity
Private equity is doing fine on its own and does not need another tax break. Congress should keep the stricter limit on deductions for interest payments —one of the few provisions in the 2017 tax law that asked large businesses to pay a little bit more.
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blog December 5, 2022 Bipartisan Retirement Proposals Are Mostly Just More Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
The EARN Act and SECURE Act 2.0, two bipartisan retirement bills working their way through Congress, are major disappointments. They would mainly provide more tax breaks for the well-off who will most likely retire comfortably regardless of what policies Congress enacts. The bills would provide modest assistance for those who really need help to save.
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brief November 10, 2022 Twenty-Three Corporations Saved $50 Billion So Far Under Trump Tax Law’s “Bonus Depreciation” that Many Lawmakers Want to Extend
Nearly two dozen of America’s largest corporations together received roughly $50 billion in tax breaks from 2018 through 2021 under a Trump tax law provision that many lawmakers now want to extend. Corporate lobbyists are even asking Congress to extend this “accelerated depreciation” tax break as part of a possible year-end tax bill.
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media mention October 7, 2022 Financial Times: Wall Street Finds a Tax Silver Lining in Down Market
Wall Street banks have found a silver lining in this year’s market rout: making money by helping wealthy clients sell some investments at a loss to lighten their tax bills.… -
report October 4, 2022 Unfinished Tax Reform: Corporate Minimum Taxes
While the Inflation Reduction Act’s corporate minimum tax is a huge improvement in our tax system, implementing the global corporate minimum tax would improve it much more. And if other governments implement the global minimum tax, the United States will have an even stronger interest in joining them to ensure that new revenue collected from American corporations flows to the U.S. rather than to other countries.
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blog October 3, 2022 Congress Should Not Leave Children Out of Possible Year-End Tax Deal
If lawmakers believe it’s worthwhile to extend corporate tax breaks, then it would be entirely unreasonable for them to not conclude the same about tax provisions that help low-income children.
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blog September 13, 2022 Billionaires Should Pay Taxes on Their Income Every Year Like the Rest of Us
The Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden last month will crack down on corporate tax dodgers and strengthen enforcement of tax laws already on the books, raising hundreds of… -
blog September 7, 2022 Romney Child Tax Credit Plan Would Leave Millions of Children Worse Off and Raise Taxes for the Average Black Family
Sen. Romney’s plan would expand the Child Tax Credit and offset the costs by scaling back other tax benefits. All told, it would raise taxes on a fourth of all kids in the U.S. This includes about a fourth of the children among the poorest fifth of U.S. families.
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report September 7, 2022 National and State-by-State Estimates of Two Approaches to Expanding the Child Tax Credit
The Romney Child Tax Credit plan would leave a quarter of children worse off compared to current law and help half as many low-income children as the 2021 expansion of the credit.