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The LIFT (Livable Incomes for Families Today) the Middle Class Act would create a new tax credit of up to $3,000 for single people and up to $6,000 for married couples, which would be an addition to existing tax credits. Eligible taxpayers would be allowed a credit equal to the maximum amount or their earnings, whichever is less. Income limits would prevent well-off households from receiving the credit.

The Rise Credit would replace the existing EITC. In most cases, the Rise Credit would be $4,000 for single people and $8,000 for married couples. Eligible taxpayers would be allowed a credit equal to the maximum amount or their earnings, whichever is less.

ITEP Research Director Carl Davis presented to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Task Force on State and Local Taxation on approaches to cannabis taxation and the recent report Taxing Cannabis.

Comments are intended to offer some perspective on the broader tax policy context in which this proposal is being considered. We find that this proposal would help to lessen long-running inequities in Connecticut’s state and local tax law that have allowed high-income taxpayers to pay lower overall effective tax rates than most low- and middle-income families.

As of 2017, 11.5 million children in the United States were living in poverty. A national, fully-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) would effectively address persistently high child poverty rates at the national and state levels. The federal CTC in its current form falls short of achieving this goal due to its earnings requirement and lack of full refundability. Fortunately, states have options to make state-level improvements in the absence of federal policy change. A state-level CTC is a tool that states can employ to remedy inequalities created by the current structure of the federal CTC. State-level CTCs would significantly reduce child poverty and deep poverty in all states while also addressing racial inequities that the current system has exacerbated. This report examines the poverty impacts, costs and beneficiaries of two options for a state-level CTC.

Income inequality is a national challenge. And inadequate federal revenue is a challenge that the nation will eventually have to reckon with. This chart book makes a strong case for why federal lawmakers should seriously consider progressive revenue-raising options.

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.

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.

There is significant room for improvement in state and local tax codes. State tax codes are filled with top-heavy exemptions and deductions and often fail to tax higher incomes at higher rates. States and localities have come to rely too heavily on regressive sales taxes that fail to reflect the modern economy. And overall tax collections are often inadequate in the short-run and unsustainable in the long-run. These types of shortcomings provide compelling reason to pursue state and local tax reforms to make these systems more equitable, adequate, and sustainable.

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.