Arkansas
State Rundown 8/18: End of Summer Tax Update
• By ITEP Staff
Summer is quickly (and sadly) coming to an end and if you’ve been away enjoying the great outdoors or off the grid, we’re here to help keep you up to date on what’s been happening on the tax front around the country...
State Experimentation with Sales Tax Holidays Magnifies Their Flaws
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
It’s back-to-school shopping season, so…everyone who buys a cell phone in Arkansas this weekend will do so sales-tax-free. For this whole week in Connecticut, and for the entire spring in New Mexico, the corporate owners of highly profitable multinational restaurant chains had the option to pocket their customers’ taxes rather than remit them to the state to fund vital public services, pass along those savings to their customers, or give a much-needed boost to their…
State Rundown 8/4: Tis the Season…for Unnecessary Sales Tax Holidays
• By ITEP Staff
It’s beginning to look a lot like that time of year again. That’s right, it’s sales tax holiday season and states across the country are doing their best to induce spending that would probably occur regardless...
State Rundown 6/30: Resolutions Are in Order for the New Fiscal Year
• By ITEP Staff
Today is the last day of the fiscal year in many states, and some lawmakers might want to take the opportunity to make some new fiscal year resolutions. Legislators in Arizona, New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, for example, should really cut back on the trickle-down tax-cut Kool-Aid, which may make parties with rich donors more fun but tends to be both harmful and habit-forming...
State Rundown 6/24: Late June State Fiscal Debates Unusually Active
• By ITEP Staff
Delayed legislative sessions and protracted federal aid debates have made for a busier June than normal for state fiscal debates. Arizona, New Hampshire, and North Carolina legislators, for example, are still pushing for expensive and regressive tax cuts in their states while they remain in session...
State Rundown 5/20: You Learn Something New Every Tax Day
• By ITEP Staff
“Tax Day” was earlier this week but the debates, research, and advocacy that determine our taxes and how they are used take place every day of the year...
State Rundown 5/6: April Showers Bring Weeds As Well As Flowers
• By ITEP Staff
This week’s state fiscal news brings a reminder that even though advocates for great economic and racial justice have won some major progressive victories recently, anti-tax zealots have been hard at work too. Lawmakers advanced or enacted troubling regressive tax cuts or shifts in Idaho, Kansas, and Montana, and are actively debating them in Iowa, […]
State Rundown 4/29: How You Like Them Washington Apples?
• By ITEP Staff
North Carolina lawmakers may have approved a massive tax subsidy giveaway to Apple, but we won’t let that news spoil our barrel this week. Nor will we be discouraged by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s threats to upset the apple cart full of positive progressive tax reforms state lawmakers recently came together to approve...Why all the optimism? Because the apple of our eye this week is Washington State, where advocates and lawmakers succeeded in a decade-long…
State Rundown 4/14: More Progressive Wins in the Headlines this Week, but Mind the Fine Print
• By ITEP Staff
Two significant victories headlined state tax debates in the past week, as New Mexico leaders improved existing targeted tax credits to give bigger boosts and reach more families in need, and West Virginia lawmakers unanimously shut down a destructive effort to eliminate the state’s progressive income tax. These developments follow last week’s major wins for progressive taxation and targeted assistance in New York, and more good news is likely soon as Washington legislators continue to…
National and State-by-State Estimates of President Biden’s Campaign Proposals for Revenue
• By ITEP Staff, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed to change the tax code to raise revenue directly from households with income exceeding $400,000. More precisely, Biden proposed to raise personal income taxes on unmarried individuals and married couples with taxable income exceeding $400,000, and he also proposed to raise payroll taxes on individual workers with earnings exceeding $400,000. Just 2 percent of taxpayers would see a direct tax hike (an increase in either personal income taxes,…
State Rundown 4/7: Tax Justice Advocates Applaud New York Budget Deal
• By ITEP Staff
New York lawmakers stole the spotlight this week as they were able to agree on—and convince reluctant Gov. Andrew Cuomo to support—strong progressive tax increases on the highest-income households and corporations in the state to fund shared priorities like K-12 education and pandemic recovery efforts. Minnesota leaders are attempting a similar performance off Broadway with progressive reforms of their own, while Kansas legislators are getting poor reviews for cutting a number of taxes and worsening…
Taxes and Racial Equity: An Overview of State and Local Policy Impacts
• By ITEP Staff
Historic and current injustices, both in public policy and in broader society, have resulted in vast disparities in income and wealth across race and ethnicity. Employment discrimination has denied good job opportunities to people of color. An uneven system of public education funding advantages wealthier white people and produces unequal educational outcomes. Racist policies such as redlining and discrimination in lending practices have denied countless Black families the opportunity to become homeowners or business owners,…
Arkansas Times: Can’t Forget the Millionaires: Income Tax Cut on Agenda Today
March 23, 2021
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families has run the numbers by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It says 72 percent of the tax cut will go to people making more than $192,000 a year. The tax cut would take effect in 2022. When fully implemented, it would cut revenue by $27.4 million a […]
State Rundown 3/17: Momentum for Sound Progressive Tax Reforms Continues to Build
• 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.
State Rundown 2/24: State Tax Debates Quickly Thaw Out with Warmer Weather
• By ITEP Staff
Warming temperatures in many parts of the country this week seem to be thawing out state fiscal debates as well. Multiple states including California, Colorado, Maryland, and New Jersey saw movement on efforts to improve tax credits for low- and middle-income families. Mississippi House lawmakers suddenly rushed through a dangerous bill to eliminate the state’s income tax and shift those taxes onto lower-income households. Montana senators also approved regressive income tax cuts and South Dakota…
State Rundown 1/14: Bad Tax Cut Ideas Prove to Be Endemic
• By ITEP Staff
As states kick off their 2021 legislative sessions, it’s clear that many governors and lawmakers are attempting to “take a mulligan” on the last year and recycle tax-slashing ideas that were already bad in 2020 and are even worse now as states try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying downturn...On a brighter note, Illinois leaders showed they did learn from the events of 2020, passing a major criminal justice reform bill and payday…
State Rundown 12/17: New and Old State Tax Debates Await in 2021
• By ITEP Staff
Our last Rundown of 2020 includes news of yet another misguided proposal to eliminate a state income tax, this time in Arkansas. Florida and Missouri, on the other hand, are looking to modernize their tax codes by becoming the last two states to enforce their own sales taxes on online retailers. Leaders in Maryland and Oregon, meanwhile, are working to decouple the state from unnecessary and regressive tax cuts included in the federal CARES Act.…
After the Dust Has Settled: How Progressive Tax Policy Fared in the General Election
• By Marco Guzman
While the results of the 2020 presidential election are all but set in stone—and a sign of life for progressive policy—the results of state tax ballot initiatives are more of a mixed bag. However, the overall fight for tax equity and raising more revenue to invest in people and communities is trending in the right direction.
State Rundown 11/24: Lawmakers and Families Thankful to Be Nearing End to 2020
• By ITEP Staff
Just as people will search their hearts to give thanks this week for the small and large things that got them through a difficult year, state lawmakers are also doing their best to count their blessings while keeping fingers crossed for badly needed federal relief to give them something to be truly grateful for.
State Rundown 11/13: States Can Find Inspiration in Arizona Ballot Success; Must Look to Congress for More Immediate Help
• By ITEP Staff
Although progressive tax policy doesn’t always succeed in in statehouses or voting booths, Arizona voters showed once again that when offered a clear choice, most people resoundingly support requiring fairer tax contributions from rich individuals and highly profitable corporations over allowing their schools and other shared priorities to wither and decay. Still, a similar effort in Illinois and a more complicated measure in California were defeated, and anti-tax zealots in West Virginia and many other…
Voters Have the Chance in 2020 to Increase Tax Equity in Arizona, Illinois, and California, And They Should
• By Marco Guzman
There’s a lot at stake in this election cycle: the nation and our economy are reeling from the effects brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and states remain in limbo as they weigh deep budget cuts and rush to address projected revenue shortfalls.
State Rundown 10/7: States Looking Inward for Needed Revenue
• By ITEP Staff
The biggest news for state and local fiscal debates this week was that federal fiscal relief to help with their pandemic-induced revenue crises is effectively off the table for at least another month. But if there is a silver lining to this federal inaction, it may be that it coincides with New Jersey’s success filling part of its own revenue shortfall through a millionaires tax, as well as with prominent wealth managers admitting that their…
New ITEP Report Shows Few Taxpayers in Each State Paying More Under Biden’s Tax Plan
• By Steve Wamhoff
An ITEP report finds that taxes that people pay directly would stay the same or go down in 2022 for 98.1 percent of Americans under President-elect Joe Biden’s tax plan.
New 50-State Analysis of Biden Revenue-Raising Tax Proposals
• By ITEP Staff
A state-by-state analysis of President-elect Joe Biden’s proposal to raise taxes for filers with income of more than $400,000 finds that in 2022, just 1.9 percent of all taxpayers would face a direct tax increase. This would vary only slightly by state. For example, in West Virginia, 0.6 percent of taxpayers would see an increase, and in Connecticut, 3.7 percent of taxpayers’ taxes would increase.
It’s No Secret—To Save State Budgets End Preferential Treatment of Capital Gains
• By Marco Guzman
In an updated policy brief, ITEP explores the flaws in state capital gains tax breaks and highlights how ending special tax breaks provides one of the simplest ways to raise additional revenue and increase equity in the tax system.
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