Publication Search Results
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September 17, 2020 Webinar: What’s Tax Got to Do With It?
Tax justice is necessary to achieve racial, social and economic justice. We need race-forward tax policies that create opportunity for everyone, demand corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share… -
report September 17, 2020 Illinois’s Flat Tax Exacerbates Income Inequality and Racial Wealth Gaps
Flat or graduated personal income taxes have varying effects on the annual individual tax liabilities of taxpayers at different income levels. Less examined is how tax structures affect income inequality and racial wealth gaps. This brief illustrates how Illinois’s historic flat income tax structure compares to the proposed Fair Tax through a multi-year retrospective analysis. It shows that Illinois’s flat income tax in lieu of a graduated rate tax used by most states amounts to a tax subsidy for the wealthiest Illinoisans that compounds income inequality and racial wealth gaps.
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brief September 15, 2020 Boosting Incomes and Improving Tax Equity with State Earned Income Tax Credits in 2020
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a policy designed to bolster the incomes of low-wage workers and offset some of the taxes they pay, providing the opportunity for families struggling to afford the high cost of living to step up and out of poverty toward meaningful economic security. The federal EITC has kept millions of Americans out of poverty since its enactment in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, the effectiveness of the EITC has been amplified as many states have enacted and expanded their own credits.
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brief September 15, 2020 Tax Justice is…
Racial justice requires tax justice. Economic justice requires tax justice. Climate and health justice require, yes, tax justice.
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ITEP Work in Action August 26, 2020 South Strong: Racial Equity and Taxes in Southern States
Southern states have a particularly egregious record on tax equity, rooted partly in racism. Lawmakers baked some of the most egregious and anti-democratic tax policies into southern state constitutions, such… -
brief July 29, 2020 Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
Lawmakers in many states have enacted “sales tax holidays” (16 states will hold them in 2020) to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, school supplies, and other items. These holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, but their benefits are minimal while their downsides are significant—and amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy brief looks at sales tax holidays as a tax reduction device.
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brief July 28, 2020 New Analysis Compares HEROES Act and HEALS Act, Disaggregates Data by Race and Income
The Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS) Act released by Senate Republicans Monday includes a tax rebate that is slightly more generous than the one provided under the March CARES Act, but fails to correct most of the earlier act’s problems. House Democrats addressed these shortcomings in the May HEROES Act, a better starting place for negotiations over the next round of COVID-19 relief. ITEP has analyzed both acts to provide a detailed comparison of how the tax rebate provisions would affect families across the income spectrum and by race. Both measures would provide cash payments to a majority of individuals and families, but the HEROES Act goes farther and is more inclusive.
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report July 21, 2020 An Updated Analysis of a Potential Payroll Tax Holiday
ITEP estimates that if Congress and the president eliminated all Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes paid by employers and employees from Sept. 1 through the end of the year, 64 percent of the benefits would go the richest 20 percent of taxpayers and 24 percent of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, as illustrated in the table below. The total cost of this hypothetical proposal would be $336 billion.
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report July 16, 2020 Trade Deals Aren’t Enough: Fixing the Tax Code to Bring American Jobs Back
We all need the public sector to protect public health, keep us safe, educate our children, and much more. Companies, particularly multinational corporations, could not function without the legal, infrastructure, financial, regulatory, health, and transportation resources that the government provides.
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report July 14, 2020 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2020?
Having a sound understanding of who pays taxes and how much is a particularly relevant question now as the nation grapples with a health and economic crisis that is devastating lower-income families and requiring all levels of government to invest more in keeping individuals, families and communities afloat. This year, the share of all taxes paid by the richest 1 percent of Americans (24.3 percent) will be just a bit higher than the share of all income going to this group (20.9 percent). The share of all taxes paid by the poorest fifth of Americans (2 percent) will be just a bit lower than the share of all income going to this group (2.8 percent).