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Key Takeaways from John Oliver’s Segment on Corporate Tax Avoidance
April 16, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
The HBO television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has become known for its longer segments that examine important issues facing the country. In its latest segment on Sunday, the show took a deep dive into corporate taxes and how many companies manage to avoid paying their fair share. Between its hilarious interludes, the segment painted a striking portrait of problems in our corporate tax code and how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) failed to address them.
State Rundown 4/13: Teacher Strikes, Special Sessions, Federal Cuts Haunting States
April 13, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
This Friday the 13th is a spooky one for many state lawmakers, as past bad fiscal decisions have been coming back to haunt them in the form of teacher strikes and walk-outs in Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, policymakers in Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Utah all attempted to exorcise negative consequences of the federal tax-cut bill from their tax codes. And our What We're Reading section includes yet another stake to the heart of the millionaire tax-flight myth and other good reads.
Everyone pays taxes, including those who earn the least. Our collective federal, state, and local tax system includes income taxes, payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare), property taxes, sales and other excise taxes. The total share of taxes (federal, state, and local) that Americans across the economic spectrum will pay in 2018 is roughly equal to their total share of income.
Many Large Corporations Reporting Tax Cut-Inspired Employee Bonuses Were Paying Low Tax Rates to Begin With
April 12, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
Since the corporate tax cut took effect at the beginning of 2018, a number of large corporations have announced plans to give bonuses or pay raises to some of their employees. Some of these companies have explicitly said that the new tax law, which sharply reduced the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, made these moves possible. But an examination of the tax-paying habits of these corporations found that many of them used various tax breaks and accounting maneuvers to reduce their tax rates to below 21 percent year after year before the new tax law…
Trump Tax Cuts Likely Make U.S. Corporate Tax Level Lowest Among Developed Countries
April 11, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
U.S. corporate tax collection was equal to 2.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016, significantly less than the average 2.9 percent collected by the other 34 other OECD countries for which data were available.
The most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that the United States is one of the least taxed of the developed nations.
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a case next week (South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc.) that has the potential to significantly improve states and localities’ ability to enforce their sales tax laws on Internet purchases.
What to Expect if the Supreme Court Allows for Online Sales Tax Collection
April 11, 2018 • By Carl Davis
Online shopping is hardly a new phenomenon. And yet states and localities still lack the authority to require many Internet retailers to collect the sales taxes that their locally based, brick and mortar competitors have been collecting for decades.
A Paul Ryan Retrospective: A Decade of Regressive Budget and Tax Plans
April 11, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
As Speaker of the House, Rep. Paul Ryan pushed through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that will cost at least $1.5 trillion and provide around half of its benefits to the richest five percent of households. He then announced that Congress needs to cut entitlements to get the budget deficit under control. Before becoming Speaker, Ryan spent several years running the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, where he issued budget and tax plans each year to carry out his goals (lower taxes for the rich and cuts in entitlement spending), which are described in the reports…
Fifteen (of Many) Reasons We Need Real Corporate Tax Reform
April 11, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
This ITEP report examines a diverse group of 15 corporations’ federal income tax disclosures for tax year 2017, the last year before the recently enacted tax law took effect, to shed light on the widespread nature of corporate tax avoidance. As a group, these companies paid no federal income tax on $24 billion in profits in 2017, and they paid almost no federal income tax on $120 billion in profits over the past five years. All but one received federal tax rebates in 2017, and almost all paid exceedingly low rates over five years.
America’s tax system overall is marginally progressive. The share of all taxes paid by the richest Americans slightly exceeds their share of the nation’s income. Conversely, the share of all taxes paid by the poorest Americans is slightly smaller than the share of the nation’s income going to that group.
New ITEP Report: Extension of the Temporary TCJA Provisions Would Be Just as Regressive as TCJA Itself
April 10, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
A new ITEP report estimates the impacts in every state of the much-discussed idea of extending the temporary provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which will expire after 2025 without further action from Congress. The report concludes that extending or making permanent these provisions would be just as skewed to the wealthy as the original law.
Extensions of the New Tax Law’s Temporary Provisions Would Mainly Benefit the Wealthy
April 10, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
This analysis finds that extending the temporary tax provisions in 2026 would not be aimed at helping the middle-class any more than TCJA as enacted helps the middle-class in 2018.
Is the Trump Organization’s Sales Tax Avoidance More Aggressive Than Amazon’s?
April 6, 2018 • By Carl Davis
In recent weeks, President Trump has been raking Amazon over the coals for failing to collect state and local sales taxes on many of the company’s sales—a criticism that has some merit. But a new story first reported by James Kosur at RedStateDisaster, and then picked up today by the Wall Street Journal, provides fascinating insight into the sales tax collection habits of the Trump Organization’s “official retail website,” TrumpStore.com.
This week, Kentucky legislators passed a bill shifting taxes onto low- and middle-income families, Oklahoma legislators reached a deal on education funding, and their counterparts in Kansas proffered multiple proposals for their education funding needs. Meanwhile, tax debates are coming down to the wire in Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska, and responses to the federal tax-cut bill were settled on in Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin.
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