Members of Congress frequently claim they want to make it easier for working people to scrape together enough savings to have some financial security in retirement. But lawmakers’ preferred method to (ostensibly) achieve this goal is through tax breaks that have allowed the tech mogul Peter Thiel to avoid taxes on $5 billion. This is just one of the eye-popping revelations in the latest expose from ProPublica.
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.
-
blog June 25, 2021 When Tax Breaks for Retirement Savings Enrich the Already Rich
-
blog June 9, 2021 U.S. Should Pursue Biden’s Tax Legislation and International Tax Agreement on Separate Tracks
The agreement announced over the weekend from the finance leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) countries to allow governments to tax some corporate profits based on the location of sales and to implement a 15 percent global minimum tax is a major step forward—but in no way changes the need for Congress to enact President Joe Biden’s tax reforms right now.
-
blog May 25, 2021 How Biden’s Plan Would Crack Down on Wealthy Tax Evaders
The Treasury Department released a report explaining what the administration’s tax enforcement plan would do—and how it fits into the president’s overall plan to collect more revenue from profitable corporations and individuals making more than $400,000 a year.
-
brief May 25, 2021 Income Tax Increases in the President’s American Families Plan
President Biden’s American Families Plan includes revenue-raising proposals that would affect only very high-income taxpayers.[1] The two most prominent of these proposals would restore the top personal income tax rate to 39.6 percent and eliminate tax breaks related to capital gains for millionaires. As this report explains, these proposals would affect less than 1 percent of taxpayers and would be confined almost exclusively to the richest 1 percent of Americans. The plan includes other tax increases that would also target the very well-off and would make our tax system fairer. It would raise additional revenue by more effectively enforcing tax laws already on the books.
-
blog May 18, 2021 IRS Clock Runs Out, Saving 14 Large Companies $1.3 Billion
Each year, corporations publicly state that some of the tax breaks they claim are unlikely to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities. And each year, corporations report that they will keep some of the dubious tax breaks they declared in previous years simply because the statute of limitations ran out before tax authorities made any conclusions. This suggests that, perhaps because of cuts to its enforcement budget, the IRS is not even investigating corporations that publicly announce they have claimed tax breaks that tax authorities would likely find illegal.
-
brief May 6, 2021 Effects of the President’s Capital Gains and Dividends Tax Proposals by State
President Biden’s proposal to eliminate the lower income tax rate on capital gains (profits from selling assets) and stock dividends for millionaires would affect less than half of one percent (0.4 percent) of U.S. taxpayers if it goes into effect in 2022. The share of taxpayers affected would be less than 1 percent in every state.
-
blog April 8, 2021 What to Expect from Biden and Congressional Democrats on Tax Increases for Individuals
The Biden administration has already provided details on its corporate tax proposals and in the next couple of weeks is expected to propose tax changes for individuals. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have some ideas of their own. What should we expect?
-
report April 8, 2021 National and State-by-State Estimates of President Biden’s Campaign Proposals for Revenue
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed to change the tax code to raise revenue directly from households with income exceeding $400,000. More precisely, Biden proposed to raise personal income taxes on unmarried individuals and married couples with taxable income exceeding $400,000, and he also proposed to raise payroll taxes on individual workers with earnings exceeding $400,000. Just 2 percent of taxpayers would see a direct tax hike (an increase in either personal income taxes, payroll taxes, or both) if Biden’s campaign proposals were in effect in 2022. The share of taxpayers affected in each state would vary from a low of 0.6 percent in West Virginia to a high of 3.5 percent in New Jersey.
-
report April 8, 2021 A Proposal to Simplify President Biden’s Campaign Plan for Personal Income Taxes and Replace the Cap on SALT Deductions
In this paper, we describe a tax policy idea that would simplify the proposals President Biden presented during his campaign to raise personal income taxes for those with annual incomes greater than $400,000. Our proposal would replace the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions with a broader limit on tax breaks for the rich that would raise more revenue than the personal income tax hikes that Biden proposed during his campaign. Our proposal would also achieve Biden’s goals of setting the top rate at 39.6 percent and raising taxes only on those with income exceeding $400,000.
-
report April 2, 2021 55 Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 Profits
At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 tax law as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.
-
blog April 1, 2021 Biden’s Corporate Tax Revolution
The corporate tax plan put forth on Wednesday by President Joe Biden to offset the cost of his infrastructure priorities would be the most significant corporate tax reform in a generation if enacted.
-
blog March 11, 2021 Rep. Doggett and Sen. Whitehouse Introduce Bill to Crack Down on Offshore Corporate Tax-Dodging
The 2017 tax law simply replaced one set of loophole-ridden rules that favored offshore profits over domestic profits with a new set of loophole-ridden rules doing the same thing. A bill introduced today by Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse would finally fix this to follow a simple principle: we should tax the offshore profits and domestic profits of our corporations the same way.
-
report March 7, 2021 Estimates of Cash Payment and Tax Credit Provisions in American Rescue Plan
Update: On March 10, the House passed the Senate version of the COVID relief bill, called the American Rescue Plan Act, and sent it to President Biden for his signature. This means that the Senate version of the bill described herein is the final legislation enacted into law.
-
blog March 3, 2021 New Estimates on Senate’s Slightly Revised Cash Payment
As the Senate takes up the COVID relief bill passed by the House last week, Senate Democrats have proposed to lower the income level at which the $1,400 cash payments would be phased out. New estimates from ITEP demonstrate that, for most people, the change would make no difference.
-
blog March 1, 2021 Senator Warren Introduces Federal Wealth Tax Legislation
With the onslaught of news about billionaire wealth soaring while low- and moderate-income families have trouble making ends meet, a federal wealth tax makes good economic and fiscal sense—and the public supports it. One poll found that 64 percent of respondents favor the idea, including a majority of Republicans.
-
blog February 26, 2021 How the Minimum Wage Is Becoming a Tax Issue for Congress
The federal minimum wage is almost comically low. At $7.25 an hour, it is 29 percent below its inflation-adjusted peak in the 1960s. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty. A solid 61 percent of voters support the idea. A majority of lawmakers in both the House and Senate support at least some version of a minimum wage hike. The popular $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes a measure that would raise the minimum wage over the next few years to $15. So, what is the problem? And why are lawmakers now talking about using the tax code to mandate a higher minimum wage?
-
blog February 19, 2021 Enforcing Current Tax Law Makes Financial Sense
While lawmakers disagree sharply over what our tax law should look like, there should be no argument that we must enforce tax laws currently on the books. Yet, Republican Congresses systematically weakened the IRS’s ability to enforce tax laws by defunding the agency, resulting in hundreds of billions in lost tax revenue every year. Two bills introduced in the U.S. House would address this by increasing tax audits of big corporations and high-income individuals and by providing more resources to the IRS.
-
blog February 18, 2021 Enacting a Federal Wealth Tax Is Playing the Long Game
Should lawmakers enact laws that they believe are sensible and constitutional, or should they shape their legislative agenda around what they believe ideological Supreme Court justices will allow? This is a dilemma facing Americans who support a federal wealth tax.
-
blog February 9, 2021 Details of House Democrats’ Cash Payments and Tax Credit Expansions
The House Ways and Means Committee published its proposal for the cash payments, tax provisions and other changes that would make up part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief legislation that President Joe Biden called for a few weeks ago.
-
blog February 1, 2021 Dems, Don’t Repeal the SALT Cap. Do This Instead.
Ever since it was enacted as part of the Trump-GOP tax law, some Democrats in Congress have been pushing to repeal the cap on federal tax deductions for state and local taxes (SALT). Recently several Democratic members have suggested that repeal of the cap should be part of COVID relief legislation.
While the cap on SALT deductions is problematic, repealing it without making other reforms would result in larger tax breaks for the rich. Instead, lawmakers should consider ITEP’s proposal to replace the SALT cap with a broader limit on tax breaks for the rich that would accomplish Biden’s goal of raising income taxes on people making more than $400,000, as he proposed on the campaign trail.
-
brief January 15, 2021 ANALYSIS: Cash and Tax Provisions in Biden’s Economic Recovery Plan
The $1.9 trillion economic recovery plan, known as the American Rescue Plan, announced by President-elect Biden contains, among other provisions, expanded cash payments and changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
-
blog January 6, 2021 How the Proposed $2,000 Cash Payments Compare to the $600 Already Provided by Congress
On Dec. 28, the House of Representatives passed the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (CASH) Act of 2020, which would increase the cash payment recently provided by Congress from $600 per person to $2,000 per person, among other changes. New estimates from ITEP compare the impacts of $2,000 payments to $600 payments.
-
map December 21, 2020 National and State-by-State Estimates of New $600 Cash Payments
The House and Senate are about to pass the first COVID-19 relief legislation since the CARES Act was enacted in March. The new relief package includes, among other provisions, cash payments of $600 per person, which is half as large as the payments provided under the CARES Act, but also extends payments to spouses and children of certain undocumented immigrants who were left out of the previous payments.
-
blog October 22, 2020 Trump Says Taxes Will Be Too High on the 2% Who Pay More Under Biden’s Plan
The Trump campaign has failed to convince the public that large numbers of Americans would face tax hikes under Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s tax plan. The claim has been widely discredited. For example, ITEP found that the federal taxes that people pay directly would rise for just 1.9 percent of taxpayers in the U.S., and that number does not vary much by state. So, Fox News and other conservative voices are trying out a new argument: Biden’s tax plan would be too burdensome for that 1.9 percent.
-
blog October 13, 2020 Supreme Court Would Provide Massive Tax Cut for the Rich if It Strikes Down Affordable Care Act
If the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as argued for by the Trump administration and the president’s nominee to the court, Amy Coney Barrett, one under-appreciated result will be a tax break of roughly $40 billion annually for about 3 percent of Americans, who all have incomes of more than $200,000.