California
California Budget Project: Measuring Up: The Social and Economic Context of the Governor’s Proposed 2012-13 Budget
December 17, 2012 • By ITEP Staff
Read the Full Report (PDF)
California Budget Project: What Makes a Tax System Fair
December 17, 2012 • By ITEP Staff
While everyone believes a tax system ought to be fair, there is disagreement as to what constitutes a fair or equitable tax system. This Budget Backgrounder describes what economists generally believe makes a tax system fair, examines how fair California’s tax system is, and discusses why fairness matters. Read the Full Report (PDF)
California Budget Project: What Would Proposition 38 Mean for California
December 17, 2012 • By ITEP Staff
Proposition 38, which will appear on the November 6, 2012 statewide ballot, would temporarily increase personal income tax rates for nearly all California taxpayers and allocate the new revenues to K-12 education, early childhood education, and repayment of state general obligation (GO) bond debt. Proposition 38 would raise an estimated $10 billion in 2013-14 – […]
California Budget Project: What Would Proposition 30 Mean for California
December 17, 2012 • By ITEP Staff
“Proposition 30, which will appear on the November 6, 2012 statewide ballot, would increase personal income tax rates on very-high-income Californians for seven years and raise the state’s sales tax rate by one-quarter cent for four years. The Legislative Analyst’s Offi ce (LAO) estimates that the measure would raise an average of approximately $6 billion […]
Huffington Post: Hollywood Activists Protest FedEx’s Low Corporate Tax Rate
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) Anna Almendrala First Posted: 01/25/2012 9:55 pm Updated: 01/26/2012 12:49 pm Unfair tax rates are the topic du jour when it comes to inequality in America and protesters in Hollywood put the issue center stage on Wednesday afternoon with a march down Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard to highlight what they called FedEx’s excesssively low […]
Chicago Tribune: The case for a graduated income tax in Illinois
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) Tuesday, February 28, 2012 If Illinois were to adopt the same graduated income tax rate structure as Iowa, Illinois would raise $6.3 billion more in revenue than it does from its current five percent flat rate, while 54 percent—over half—of all taxpayers would pay less in state income taxes…from The Case for Creating […]
Journal News: Gas taxes fail in their purpose
December 17, 2012
11:02 PM, Mar. 19, 2012 Written by A Journal News editorial Sunday’s report on gas taxes in New York helps codify the pain and anguish so many New Yorkers feel when they so much as drive by a gas station in the Empire State. “It’s outrageous,” declared Stephen Lester, whose quest for cheaper gas takes […]
Business Week: A Tax Windfall From the Housing Bust
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Amanda J. Crawford on April 26, 2012 As Karen Jacobs, an economist in Arizona’s Department of Revenue, was reviewing income tax data for 2010, she came across a puzzling trend: Refunds were down and tax liability was up even though the state’s unemployment rate peaked that year, at 10.8 percent. “My first […]
Fairfield County Business Journal: Corporations dodge taxes, hand small biz the bill
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) by Janice Kirkel The amount the average American small business had to pay in 2011 to cover the cost of corporate abuse of tax havens was $2,116.The amount an individual tax filer had to pay was $426. Both are the findings of a report by U.S. PIRG, the federation of state public interest […]
Casper Star-Tribune: Wyoming ranks high again for economic growth
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Sunday, April 29, 2012 10:00 am CHEYENNE — Wyoming again ranks fourth among states for best economic growth and outlook, largely because of the state’s low total tax burden, according to a nonprofit group’s report. The American Legislative Exchange Council ranked Wyoming fourth for the […]
Chicago Tribune: Tax distortions
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) June 08, 2012 This is in response to “Illinois shouldn’t adopt progressive tax; Take it from an ex-Californian” (Perspective, June 8), by Lawrence J. McQuillan, chief economist at the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market think tank. I was alarmed by the way McQuillan’s op-ed distorts both the Illinois and California tax systems. He […]
Bloomberg: States Lacking Income Tax Get No Boost in Growth
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Brian Chappatta on June 25, 2012 Governors seeking to expand their economies by eliminating income taxes find little support for the idea in the record of U.S. states that lack such a levy. The BGOV Barometer shows the nine states with the highest personal income taxes on residents outperformed or kept pace […]
Think Progress: Having No Income Tax Gives States No Economic Boost
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Pat Garofalo on Jun 26, 2012 at 10:30 am According to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, states without an income tax received no discernible boost in growth over the last decade compared to states with relatively high income taxes. Lacking an income tax provided no boost to […]
NPR’s State Impact: Recent Study Questions “New Hampshire Advantage”
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) June 29, 2012 | 11:23 AMBy Emily Corwin A couple of weeks ago, Arthur Laffer — an economist made famous for his work in the Reagan administration — co-wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal warning that the expiration of federal tax cuts in January puts the country on the verge […]
New York Times: To Cut Taxes or Keep Services- 2 States Act as Test Cases
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By MICHAEL COOPERPublished: July 10, 2012 OCEAN CITY, Md. — As state governments begin to emerge from the long downturn, many are grappling with a difficult choice: should they restore some of the services and jobs they were forced to cut after the recession or cut taxes in the hopes of bolstering their […]
South Bend Tribune: Here’s a better idea on Indiana’s sales tax
December 17, 2012
ANDREA NEAL 5:46 a.m. EDT, September 19, 2012 At 3.4 percent, Indiana’s personal income tax is one of the nation’s lowest. A half dozen states, including Texas and Florida, don’t charge income tax at all; 41 states impose a rate higher than Indiana’s. At 7 percent, the Indiana sales tax ties for second highest with […]
San Francisco Chronicle: Calif. voters face 2 tax measures on ballot
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) Wyatt BuchananUpdated 11:30 p.m., Saturday, September 22, 2012 Sacramento — Californians will decide two tax measures on the November ballot that would have similar impacts on their wallets but vastly different, and in some ways unknowable, effects on the state’s budget and funding for public education. Proposition 30 and Proposition 38 are competing […]
The News-Sentinel: Alternative to Gregg, Pence plans: roll back sales tax to 6.5 percent
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Andrea Neal For The News-SentinelMonday, September 24, 2012 – 9:44 am At 3.4 percent, Indiana’s personal income tax is one of the nation’s lowest. A half-dozen states, including Texas and Florida, don’t charge income tax at all; 41 states impose a rate higher than Indiana’s. At 7 percent, the Indiana sales tax […]
The Huffington Post: Will Someone Please Increase My Taxes!?
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) The article began: Last November, Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a major study of the federal income taxes paid, or not paid, by 280 big, profitable Fortune 500 corporations. That report found, among other things, that 30 of the companies paid no federal income tax […]
Mercury News: Superrich stay put in high-tax states like California
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Mike Rosenberg [email protected]: 10/01/2012 10:18:54 AM PDTUpdated: 10/01/2012 10:25:43 AM PDT Some of us might love to hate ’em, but we need millionaires in California — or we’d lose tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue that pays for things like education and public safety. So should we be freaking out […]
Bloomberg: California’s Fiscal Delusion, and America’s
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Josh Barro Nov 2, 2012 4:34 PM ET I spent most of the last week in Los Angeles. And when I discussed Bloomberg View’s recent editorial on California — the one that argues Californians should relax their property tax limits instead of raising taxes again on high incomes — with the locals, […]
MSNBC: Doing the Math- How Much Prop. 30 Costs You
December 17, 2012
By SAM BROCK NBCBayArea.com updated 11/9/2012 9:18:16 AM ET California legislators are breathing a little easier now that voters surprisingly, and through a solid majority, approved the governor’s tax hike, Prop. 30. The new law will raise billions of dollars a year for most of the next decade to stem the state’s budget shortfall and […]
Orange County Register: Why state tax increases are reasonable
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) Published: Nov. 26, 2012 Updated: 6:18 p.m. By HAO-NHIEN VU / Journalist, blogger and math teacher Proposition 30’s passage is not just about education, but it heralds in a new age of more thoughtfulness on taxes. California voters show they do not have a knee-jerk reaction that all taxes are bad, and are […]
Washington Post: The teetotalers’ solution to the austerity crisis
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) Posted by Dylan Matthews on December 3, 2012 at 1:49 pm It’s basically a given at this point that any austerity crisis deal will involve new sources of revenue, be it in the form of higher rates for top earners, pared back tax expenditures, or a new tax altogether. Speculation around the third […]
The Progressive Income Tax: An Essential Element of Fair and Sustainable State Tax Systems
July 1, 2012 • By Meg Wiehe
A few vocal critics have pointed to state personal income taxes as the source of a variety of fiscal and economic problems- arguing that it has enabled wasteful spending, fueled the volatility of revenue collections, or even stifled job-creation. Accordingly, some of these critics have called for the outright repeal of the income tax, while others have suggested making it significantly less progressive. Such proposals, if acted upon, would make it all but impossible for state tax systems to produce revenue in a fair and sustainable fashion.
Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
Subscribe to ITEP Emails
Tax research and policy news in your inbox.
Promote Fair Tax Policy
Your gift to ITEP promotes tax justice. With your help, we do research that supports taxing millionaires and billionaires, taxing big corporations and raising revenue for the things our people, our communities and our planet need.
Together, we can create a country with more economic justice, more racial justice, more climate justice… and more tax justice.