Corporate Tax Watch
House Bill’s $164 Billion Giveaway to Multinational Corporations Puts America Last
May 27, 2025 • By Sarah Austin
The House of Representatives’ recently passed tax bill changes course on taxing multinational corporations engaged in shifting U.S. profits overseas, offering massive tax giveaways that weaken American revenues and risk sending more American corporate investment offshore.
Analysis of Tax Provisions in the House Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates
May 22, 2025 • By Carl Davis, Jessica Vela, Joe Hughes, Steve Wamhoff
The poorest fifth of Americans would receive 1 percent of the House reconciliation bill's net tax cuts in 2026 while the richest fifth of Americans would receive two-thirds of the tax cuts. The richest 5 percent alone would receive a little less than half of the net tax cuts that year.
What Corporations Have to Gain from the Gutting of the IRS
May 7, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff
Seven huge corporations recently announced that in 2024 they were allowed to collectively keep $1.4 billion in tax breaks from previous years that they had publicly admitted would likely be found illegal if investigated – all because the tax authorities were unable to identify and disallow them before the statute of limitations ran out.
Federal Tax Debate 2025
May 2, 2025 • By .ITEP Staff
The tax cuts in the House bill mostly flow to those who have the most. Roughly 68% of the tax cuts go to the richest 20% in the U.S. Some other notable changes would support private school voucher programs, harm immigrant communities, and widen income and racial inequality.
It’s Tax Day. You’ve Paid Your Share, but the Billionaires Haven’t.
April 15, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer
You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now.
What the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Got Wrong About Tesla’s Tax Avoidance
April 4, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
Tesla’s income tax avoidance is still in the news, and that’s a good thing.
Why Americans Are Right to Be Unhappy About Corporate Tax Avoidance
March 26, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
If lawmakers wanted to reduce income inequality and racial inequality, shutting down or at least limiting corporate tax breaks would be one option to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, President Trump and the current Congress show little interest in this and may even move in the opposite direction by introducing new corporate tax breaks.
State Approaches to Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI)
March 11, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
Many states with corporate income taxes include some amount of federally defined Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) in their tax bases. Twenty-one states plus D.C. include some amount of GILTI in their tax calculations in 2025.
Trump’s Address to Congress Obscures His Actual Tax Agenda
March 5, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer
In last night’s address to Congress, President Trump spent more time insulting Americans, lying, and bragging than he did talking about taxes. But regardless of what President Trump and Elon Musk talk about most loudly and angrily, there is one clear policy that they and the corporations and billionaires that support them will try hardest […]
A Revenue Analysis of Worldwide Combined Reporting in the States
February 20, 2025 • By Carl Davis, Matthew Gardner
Universal adoption of mandatory worldwide combined reporting would boost state corporate income tax revenues by roughly 14 percent. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia would experience revenue increases totaling $19.1 billion.
The Five Biggest Corporations Represented at Trump’s Inauguration Could Save $75 Billion from One Tax Break Before Congress
February 11, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini
New financial reports indicate five of America’s biggest corporations—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla—could win $75 billion in tax breaks if Congress and the President satisfy demands from corporate lobbyists to reinstate a provision repealed under the 2017 Trump tax law.
Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $2 Billion of U.S. Income in 2024
January 30, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner
Tesla reported $2.3 billion of U.S. income in 2024 but paid zero federal income tax. Over the past three years, the Elon Musk-led company reports $10.8 billion of U.S. income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million.
ITEP’s Top Charts of 2024
December 17, 2024 • By Alex Welch
As we close out 2024, we want to lift up the tax charts we published this year that received the most engagement from readers. Covering federal, state, and local tax work, here are our top charts of 2024.
Tax Justice in the Crosshairs
November 8, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer
Billionaires and businesses have too much power in Washington. Tax revenue is needed to pay for things we all need. If we want economic justice, racial justice and climate justice, we must have tax justice.
How Tax Decisions in 2025 Can Advance Racial Justice
October 30, 2024 • By Brakeyshia Samms, Jon Whiten
In the coming 14 months, federal lawmakers should address longstanding issues of racism in the tax code. With a presidential election this fall and many provisions of 2017’s Trump tax law expiring at the end of 2025, the debate over tax policy and economic fairness is in full swing.
A Distributional Analysis of Kamala Harris’ Tax Plan
October 23, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff
The tax proposals from Vice President Kamala Harris would, on average, lead to a tax increase for the richest 1 percent of Americans and a tax cut for all other income groups.
Fifteen Companies Each Avoided More than $1 Billion in Taxes from a Single Trump Tax Cut
October 10, 2024 • By Joe Hughes, Spandan Marasini
The deduction for Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII), one of the tax cuts included in former President Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, provides a lower effective tax rate on income earned from intangible assets, such as patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property. Since the law went into effect in 2018, 15 corporations have separately reported more than $1 billion in tax benefits. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) reported the most, at more than $11 billion in tax breaks from 2018 to 2023. Other beneficiaries include large tech firms such as Meta, Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm.
A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
October 7, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Erika Frankel, Galen Hendricks, Joe Hughes, Matthew Gardner, Michael Ettlinger, Steve Wamhoff
Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.
Five Tax Takeaways from 2024 State Legislative Sessions
July 18, 2024 • By Aidan Davis
Major tax cuts were largely rejected this year, but states continue to chip away at income taxes. And while property tax cuts were a hot topic across the country, many states failed to deliver effective solutions to affordability issues.
Corporate Tax Breaks Contribute to Income and Racial Inequality and Shift Resources to Foreign Investors
July 16, 2024 • By Emma Sifre, Steve Wamhoff
Corporate tax cuts and corporate tax avoidance worsen income and racial inequality in our country. Most of the benefits flow to foreign investors and the richest 20% of Americans.
Who Benefits and Who Pays: How Corporate Tax Breaks Drive Inequality
June 27, 2024 • By Emma Sifre, Steve Wamhoff
Corporate tax breaks and corporate tax avoidance significantly contribute to income and racial inequality and largely benefit foreign investors.
SCOTUS Rejects Expansion of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts, Leaves Broader Tax Questions for Another Day
June 20, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff
The Supreme Court matters, for tax fairness as for every other part of our lives. Whether or not we ever have a government that taxes billionaires as much as it taxes the rest of us will depend on how the Supreme Court rules in the future and who appoints justices to the Court.
Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law
May 2, 2024 • By Matthew Gardner, Michael Ettlinger, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff
The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018.
Biden Is Right: Corporate Tax Avoidance Has Big Problems That We Can Fix
April 1, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
Sensible reforms to the corporate tax system can help both crack down on corporate tax avoidance and ensure companies that are flourishing are paying their share for the public infrastructure that forms the building blocks of their success.
Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan
March 12, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff
President Biden’s most recent budget plan includes proposals that would raise more than $5 trillion from high-income individuals and corporations over a decade. Like the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, it would partly reverse the Trump tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals, clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, and require the wealthiest individuals to pay taxes on their capital gains income just as they are required to for other types of income, among other reforms.
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.