America’s tax system is just barely progressive, and not nearly as progressive as many suggest or as progressive as it could be. There is plenty of room for lawmakers to improve the progressivity of the tax code to combat economic, wealth, and racial inequality.
Publication Search Results
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report April 9, 2024 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2024
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brief March 14, 2024 Local Mansion Taxes: Building Stronger Communities with Progressive Taxes on High-Value Real Estate
More than one dozen cities and counties levy progressive taxes on high-price real estate transactions — sometimes called mansion taxes — and over a dozen more are considering such policies. By asking buyers and sellers with greater financial means to contribute more to the common good, these policies are equipping communities with resources to make progress on critical challenges of local and national concern.
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report March 12, 2024 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan
President Biden’s most recent budget plan includes proposals that would raise more than $5 trillion from high-income individuals and corporations over a decade. Like the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, it would partly reverse the Trump tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals, clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, and require the wealthiest individuals to pay taxes on their capital gains income just as they are required to for other types of income, among other reforms.
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report February 29, 2024 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.
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report February 6, 2024 Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality
Historic and ongoing discrimination have created stark racial disparities in the US, and the racial retirement wealth gap is one such example.
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brief February 2, 2024 House SALT Proposal is Expensive, Unneeded, and Poorly Designed
The SALT Marriage Penalty Elimination Act passed by the House Rules Committee on February 1 is costly, decreasing tax revenue by about $8 billion in 2023.
It also mostly only helps taxpayers who are already well off. -
brief February 2, 2024 Impacts of the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act passed by the House of Representatives on January 31 is a compromise between lawmakers who want to address child poverty and… -
report January 17, 2024 Ongoing Use of Offshore Tax Havens Demonstrates the Need for the Global Minimum Tax
Key Findings To avoid taxation, American corporations use accounting gimmicks that make profits appear to be earned in foreign jurisdictions which tax corporate profits very lightly or not at all.… -
brief January 16, 2024 Proposed Tax Deal Would Help Millions of Kids with Child Tax Credit Expansion While Extending Damaging Corporate Tax Breaks
On January 16, Congressional tax writers officially announced the details of a tax policy agreement. The deal includes expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to improve access for low-… -
report December 7, 2023 The Estate Tax is Irrelevant to More Than 99 Percent of Americans
The federal estate tax has reached historic lows. In 2019, only 8 of every 10,000 people who died left an estate large enough to trigger the tax. Legislative changes under presidents of both parties have increased the basic exemption from the estate tax over the past 20 years. This has cut the share of adults leaving behind taxable estates down from more than 2 percent to well under 1 percent.