Recent Work
2065 items
The Federal Estate Tax: An Important Progressive Revenue Source
December 6, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
For years, wealth and income inequality have been widening at a troubling pace. One study estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 42 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012, up from 28 percent in 1989. Lawmakers have exacerbated this trend by dramatically cutting federal taxes on inherited wealth, most recently by doubling the estate tax exemption as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Further, lawmakers have done little to stop aggressive accounting schemes designed to avoid the estate tax altogether. This report explains how the percentage of estates subject to the federal estate tax…
State Rundown 12/5: Familiar Questions Returning to Fore as 2019 Approaches
December 5, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers are preparing their agendas for 2019 and looking at all sorts of tax and budget policies in the process, raising many familiar questions. Oregon legislators, for example, will try to fill in the blanks in a proposal to boost investments in education that left out detail on how to fund them, while their counterparts in Texas face the inverse problem of a proposed property tax cut that fails to clarify how schools could be protected from cuts. Similar school finance debates will play out in many other states. Alabama, Kansas, and Louisiana will look at gas tax updates,…
Housing for All? Developers Bulldoze Taxpayers in Affordable Housing Debate
December 4, 2018 • By Monica Miller
Affordable housing advocates across the nation are attempting to address the problem at the local level, but they often face political and community opposition. These challenges are currently playing out in Baltimore, which is turning into a case study in how the best-planned civic interventions run into tough road blocks when it comes to tax increases versus moneyed special interest who seek to block those tax increases.
New Legislation Aims to Change Tax Law Provisions That Incentivize Outsourcing
November 29, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and several Senate co-sponsors this week introduced the Removing Incentives for Outsourcing Act, which curbs harmful new incentives created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that encourage companies like GM to move their profits and operations offshore.
GM Announcement Confirms Tax Cuts Don’t Prevent, May Encourage Layoffs
November 27, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
GM’s most recent quarterly financial report reveals the company has saved more than $150 million so far this year due to last year’s corporate tax cuts. So the layoffs announcement may seem especially jarring to anyone who believed President Trump’s claim that his tax cuts would spur job creation—including the Ohio residents Trump told directly “don’t sell your homes” because lost auto-making jobs “are all coming back.”
New ITEP Report on Depreciation Breaks: The Most Important Tax Giveaway that People Don’t Know About
November 19, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
Many Americans sense that the tax code is riddled with unnecessary and costly breaks for big business, but if asked to name one, few would reply “accelerated depreciation.” While they may seem arcane, tax breaks like “full expensing” and other types of accelerated depreciation are among the central problems in our tax code. A new report from ITEP makes the case that any serious tax reform would repeal or sharply curb these provisions.
The Failure of Expensing and Other Depreciation Tax Breaks
November 19, 2018 • By Richard Phillips, Steve Wamhoff
Congress permitted full expensing only for five years, which will encourage businesses to speed up investments they would have made later. Republicans in Congress have discussed making the expensing provision permanent. This report argues that Congress should move in the other direction and repeal not just the full expensing provision but even some of the permanent accelerated depreciation breaks in the tax code, for several reasons.
House Democrats Falter with Proposed Rule to Restrict Tax Hikes
November 16, 2018 • By Alan Essig
Democratic leaders have proposed rules to be adopted in the next Congress, and many of them, such as eliminating the requirement for “dynamic scoring,” are very sensible. But one of the proposed rules is problematic because it would make it harder to raise revenue.
State Rundown 11/16: Election Results Clarify Agendas as Real Work Begins
November 16, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
State policymakers, voters, and observers have been reflecting on this year’s campaigns and looking ahead to how the policy opportunities in their states have shifted as a result. For example, Arkansas’s governor sees a fresh chance to slash income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, while the governor-elect of Illinois will be doing just the opposite, launching into a promised effort to shore up the state’s budget by asking the wealthy to pay more. New York and Virginia residents may end up with buyers’ remorse after Amazon accepted their combined $2 billion tax subsidy offers for its HQ2 project. And…
The cap on federal tax deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) that is in effect now under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is a flawed provision but repealing it outright would be costly and provide a windfall to the rich. Congress should consider replacing the SALT cap with a different type of limit on deductions that would avoid both of these outcomes. Using the ITEP microsimulation tax model, this report provides revenue estimates and distributional estimates for several such options, assuming they would be in effect in 2019.
Today Amazon announced major expansions in New York and Virginia, where it intends to hire up to 50,000 full-time employees. The announcement marks the culmination of a highly publicized search that lasted more than a year and involved aggressive courting of the company by cities across the nation. The following are three tax-related observations on the announcement.
15 Companies Report an Average 10.4 Percentage Point Drop in Effective Tax Rates Since 2017
November 13, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Comparing the year’s first three quarterly filings of 2018 with those of 2017, we find that 15 of the largest Fortune 500 companies reported worldwide effective income tax rates declining by an average of 10.4 percentage points and by as much as 16 percentage points. In total these companies owed $22.3 billion less in taxes than they would have under their 2017 effective rates, saving an average of $1.5 billion each.
Tuesday’s elections shook up statehouses, governors’ offices, and tax laws in many states, and in this week’s Rundown we bring you the top 3 election state tax policy stories to emerge. First, voters in Kansas and other states sent a message that regressive tax cuts and supply-side economics have not succeeded and are not welcome among their state fiscal policies. Meanwhile, residents of many other states, including most notably Illinois, voted for representatives who reflect their preference for equitable, sustainable policies to improve their state economies through smart public investments and improve the lives of all residents through progressive tax structures. Lastly, while some states missed…
The Post-Midterms Tax Policy Outlook: Small Ball and Real Tax Reform Debate
November 8, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
With most of the results of the 2018 midterm elections in, the broad landscape for federal tax policy over the next couple years is coming into view. Democratic control of the House and Republican control of the Senate means a significant tax overhaul is unlikely, but minor tax changes may happen. And the run-up to the 2020 presidential election will force more robust debate over the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and what aspects of the legislation should be repealed, reformed, or built upon.
Amazon HQ2 Finalists Should Disclose the Financial Incentives They Promised
November 6, 2018 • By Guest Blogger
The Crystal City and Long Island City subsidy offers are among the many Amazon HQ2 bids that remain completely hidden. Citizens have no idea what their elected officials have promised to a company headed by the richest person on earth.
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