California

Read this Policy Brief in PDF Form Map of State Treatment of Itemized Deductions Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia allow a group of income tax breaks known as “itemized deductions.” [1] Itemized deductions are designed to help defray a wide variety of personal expenditures that affect a taxpayer’s ability to pay taxes, including charitable […]

Read full report in PDF Download detailed appendix with state-by-state information on deductions and credits (Excel) Every state levying a personal income tax offers at least one deduction or credit designed to defray the cost of higher education. In theory, these policies help families cope with rising tuition prices by incentivizing college savings or partially […]

This report was updated in March 2017 Read as a PDF. (Includes Full Appendix of State-by-State Data) Report Landing Page Public debates over federal immigration reform often suffer from insufficient and inaccurate information about the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants particularly at the state level. The truth is that undocumented immigrants living in the United […]

See the 2016 Updated Brief Here Read the brief in a PDF here.  that time, the EITC has been improved to lift and keep more working families out of poverty. The most recent improvements enhanced the credit for families with three or more children and for married couples. First enacted temporarily as part of the […]

When thinking of tax havens, one generally pictures notorious zero-tax Caribbean islands like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. However, we can also find a tax haven a lot closer to home in the state of Delaware - a choice location for U.S. business formation. A loophole in Delaware's tax code is responsible for the loss of billions of dollars in revenue in other U.S. states, and its lack of incorporation transparency makes it a magnet for people looking to create anonymous shell companies, which individuals and corporations can use to evade an inestimable amount in federal and foreign taxes. The…

The U.S. Census Bureau released data in September showing that the share of Americans living in poverty remains high. In 2014, the national poverty rate was 14.8 percent - statistically unchanged from the previous year. However, the poverty rate remains 2.3 percentage points higher than it was in 2007, before the Great Recession, indicating that recent economic gains have not yet reached all households and that there is much room for improvement. The 2014 measure translates to more than 46.7 million - more than 1 in 7 - Americans living in poverty. Most state poverty rates also held steady between…

Despite some economic gains in recent years, the number of Americans living in poverty has held steady over the past four years. At the same time, wages for working families have remained stagnant and more than half of the jobs created by the economic recovery since 2010 were low-paying, mostly in the food services, retail, and employment services industries. Our country's growing class of low-wage workers often faces a dual challenge as they struggle to make ends meet. First, wages are too low and growing too slowly - despite recent productivity gains - to keep up with the rising cost…