Recent Work
2048 items
Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law
May 2, 2024 • By Matthew Gardner, Michael Ettlinger, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff
The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018.
Increased information transfer from the IRS would improve the quality of data at the Census Bureau and expand opportunities for tax policy research. This is critical for researchers who rely on Census Bureau data and products to fill the informational gaps present in tax data.
Many state legislative sessions are wrapping up...
Tax History Matters: A Q&A with Professor Andrew Kahrl, Author of ‘The Black Tax’
April 24, 2024 • By Brakeyshia Samms
In his new book, The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America, Professor Andrew Kahrl walks readers through the history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.
TurboTax Maker Puts a Pink Spin on Exploitative Financial Products
April 22, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer
This op-ed originally appeared in MSNBC Tax preparation behemoth Intuit (maker of TurboTax) recently unveiled a new campaign branding itself as a feminist company. “When it comes to the complexities of the tax code, women encounter distinct challenges,” reads a post on the company’s official blog, “and here at Intuit, we’re committed to empowering prosperity for […]
State Rundown 4/17: Tax Cut Proposals and the Consequences of Bad Tax Cuts
April 17, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
Happy (belated) Tax Day!
The Case for More Progressive State and Local Tax Systems, in Charts
April 17, 2024 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Eli Byerly-Duke
In a new chart book, Fairness Matters, we further explore our Who Pays? data with new graphics that reinforce the findings in the main report and demonstrate how state-level tax decisions shape economic divides for better and worse.
Key Findings For families of modest means, California is not a high-tax state. California taxes are close to the national average for families in the bottom 80 percent of the income scale. For the bottom 40 percent of families, California taxes are lower than states like Florida and Texas. The highest earners usually pay higher […]
Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
April 11, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
State and local tax codes can do a lot to reduce inequality. But they add to the nation’s growing income inequality problem when they capture a greater share of income from low- or moderate-income taxpayers. These regressive tax codes also result in higher tax rates on communities of color, further worsening racial income and wealth divides.
These Three Local EITCs Are Boosting Family Incomes at Tax Time
April 10, 2024 • By Andrew Boardman
This tax season more than 800,000 households in New York City, Maryland's Montgomery County, and San Francisco are set to receive a boost through local refundable EITCs. These credits put dollars directly into the pockets of low-income households, equipping families with resources to better make ends meet and invest in their futures. In turn, they can help build stronger, fairer, and more resilient communities.
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.
State Rundown 4/3: Some States Buck the Trend on Foolish Tax Policy
April 3, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
This week tax cuts were debated across the upper Midwest...
Five Things to Know About Tax Foundation’s Critique of Maryland’s Worldwide Combined Reporting Proposal
April 1, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Matthew Gardner
Maryland lawmakers are considering enacting worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), also known as complete reporting. This policy offers a more accurate, and less gameable, way to calculate the amount of profit subject to state corporate tax. Enacting WWCR in Maryland would represent a huge step toward eliminating state corporate tax avoidance as it neutralizes a wide […]
Biden Is Right: Corporate Tax Avoidance Has Big Problems That We Can Fix
April 1, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
Sensible reforms to the corporate tax system can help both crack down on corporate tax avoidance and ensure companies that are flourishing are paying their share for the public infrastructure that forms the building blocks of their success.
State Rundown 3/28: Tax Cut Madness, But Our Brackets Bet on Tax Fairness
March 28, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
While madness is typically reserved for basketball in March, several high-profile, regressive tax cuts are making their way through state legislatures this week...
Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
Subscribe to ITEP Emails
Tax research and policy news in your inbox.
Promote Fair Tax Policy
Your gift to ITEP promotes tax justice. With your help, we do research that supports taxing millionaires and billionaires, taxing big corporations and raising revenue for the things our people, our communities and our planet need.
Together, we can create a country with more economic justice, more racial justice, more climate justice… and more tax justice.