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2119 items
Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits.
State Rundown 3/17: Momentum for Sound Progressive Tax Reforms Continues to Build
March 17, 2021 • By ITEP Staff
We wrote last week that the inclusion of fiscal relief for states and localities in Congress’s American Rescue Plan should free up state lawmakers’ time and attention to focus on the comprehensive reforms needed to address upside-down and inadequate tax codes, and some states are already doing just that.
Trickle-Down Myths Swamp Tax Policy Debates in Mississippi and West Virginia
March 15, 2021 • By Aidan Davis
Recent proposals in both Mississippi and West Virginia seek to pare back, and ultimately eliminate, each state’s income tax while shifting the responsibility of funding services even more onto low- and middle-income taxpayers through increased consumption taxes. The states are moving forward with this tax experiment even though a similar experiment notoriously and immediately sent Kansas into a financial tailspin.
State and Local Cannabis Tax Revenue Jumps 58%, Surpassing $3 Billion in 2020
March 15, 2021 • By Carl Davis
Cannabis taxes are a small part of state and local budgets, clocking in at less than 2 percent of tax revenue in the states with legal adult-use sales. But they’re also one of states’ fastest-growing revenue sources. Powered by an expanding legal market and a pandemic-driven boost in cannabis use, excise and sales taxes on […]
Rep. Doggett and Sen. Whitehouse Introduce Bill to Crack Down on Offshore Corporate Tax-Dodging
March 11, 2021 • By Steve Wamhoff
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.
State Rundown 3/10: Federal Pandemic Aid Means States Can Focus on the Big Picture
March 10, 2021 • By ITEP Staff
State and local policymakers will be preoccupied for a short time with celebrating and deciphering the federal pandemic relief package approved today, but ultimately the federal aid should free them to focus on even bigger concerns such as tax codes that often fail to adequately fund core priorities even in good years and exacerbate the economic and racial inequities that this pandemic has laid bare.
Targeted Relief and the American Rescue Plan in Five Charts
March 10, 2021 • By Stephanie Clegg
The American Rescue Plan Act is unique in that it employs the tax code to deliver relief to those struggling most. These five charts provide a glimpse of how the plan helps families across the income spectrum and also targets economic relief to low- and moderate-income families in the form of cash payments and expansions to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.
Estimates of Cash Payment and Tax Credit Provisions in American Rescue Plan
March 7, 2021 • By Steve Wamhoff
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.
10 states to have gone two decades or more without a gas tax increase.
Many state governments are struggling to repair and expand their transportation infrastructure because they are attempting to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with fixed-rate gasoline taxes that are rarely increased.
Although lawmakers in some states continue to push for expensive and regressive tax cuts that would primarily benefit wealthy households, worsen economic and racial injustices, and undermine funding for key public services, this week’s state fiscal news is dominated by efforts to do the opposite. Leaders in the District of Columbia, Maine, Nebraska, New York, Washington, and Wyoming made recent headlines by advocating for policies that improve on upside-down tax codes and generate needed funding for shared priorities like schools and health care.
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.
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.
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…
An Unequal Recession Will Breed Unequal Recovery Without Bold Investments
February 26, 2021 • By Stephanie Clegg
Without bold investments now, experts predict a longer, more unequal recovery. President Biden's American Rescue Plan, the framework for legislation expected to pass this week in the House, would boost economic well-being for those whose livelihoods were most affected by the pandemic-induced economic crisis.
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