Corporate Tax Watch

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.

President Biden discussed multiple tax proposals during the State of the Union address to Congress. Several of these proposals appeared in the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, but at least two appear to be new proposals. Raise Corporate Tax Rate from 21 Percent to 28 Percent 10-Year Revenue Impact in President’s Previous […]

The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.

The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act passed by the House of Representatives on January 31 is a compromise between lawmakers who want to address child poverty and lawmakers who want to expand the Trump tax cuts for corporations and therefore includes provisions that do both. It also offsets the costs of those […]

Key Findings To avoid taxation, American corporations use accounting gimmicks that make profits appear to be earned in foreign jurisdictions which tax corporate profits very lightly or not at all. In 2020, American corporations claimed profits in 15 of these jurisdictions that were often far too high to be possible. For example, in four jurisdictions […]

On January 16, Congressional tax writers officially announced the details of a tax policy agreement. The deal includes expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to improve access for low- and middle-income families as well as expansions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts for businesses. The agreement also includes bipartisan tax priorities tax provisions for […]

Two Senate hearings last week focused on how the richest Americans are avoiding and evading taxes in ways that ordinary Americans could hardly imagine. All the experts brought in to testify seemed to agree that the House GOP’s recent tactic of “paying for” a spending proposal by cutting IRS funding makes no sense because it […]

While Congress considers extending expired tax provisions, it should first and foremost focus on expanding the Child Tax Credit, a policy with a proven track record of helping families and children.

State lawmakers are increasingly interested in reforming their corporate tax bases to start from a comprehensive measure of worldwide profit. This provides a more accurate, and less gameable, starting point for calculating profits subject to state corporate tax. Mandating this kind of filing system, known as worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), would be transformative, as it would all but eliminate state corporate tax avoidance done through the artificial shifting of profits into low-tax countries.

The tax preparation industry has for years lobbied to prevent the IRS from providing a tool that would allow Americans to file their taxes online for free. Recent public disclosures from Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and the leader of the pack, show that tax breaks the company claims for doing “research” might be larger […]

One of the most attention-grabbing anti-tax campaigns at work today is called SAFE, which stands for Saving America’s Family Enterprises. But it might as well mean Saving Aristocrats From Everything given the outfit’s knack for opposing any national proposal to limit special tax advantages that only the wealthy enjoy. The basic approach of SAFE is […]

The Moore v. United States case that will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court could jeopardize at least $270 billion if SCOTUS finds the entire transition tax to be unconstitutional. The decision could also invalidate other important parts of the current tax system while preempting progressive wealth tax proposals. Such an outcome would represent one of the costliest—and most ethically questionable - Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history.

The Supreme Court is set to hear what could become one of the most important tax cases in a century. If decided broadly—with a ruling that strikes down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax for corporations, effectively making it unconstitutional to tax unrealized income—the Roberts Court’s decision in Moore v. US could stretch far beyond the plaintiffs themselves and would put in legal jeopardy many laws that prevent corporations and individuals from avoiding taxes and level the economic playing field.

Nearly one-third of states took steps to improve their tax systems this year by investing in people through refundable tax credits, and in a few notable cases by raising revenue from those most able to pay. But another third of states lost ground, continuing a trend of permanent tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit high-income households and make tax codes less adequate and equitable.

The qualified success of Minnesota’s GILTI conformity—to say nothing of the state’s serious dalliance with the game-changing worldwide combined reporting--sends a clear signal that the days may be coming to an end when big multinationals can scare state lawmakers into allowing them to game the tax system.

Since TCJA expanded tax breaks for “accelerated depreciation” starting in 2018, it has reduced taxes by nearly $67 billion for the 25 profitable corporations that benefited the most. Congress is now looking at extending this policy.

The trio of tax bills that cleared the House Ways and Means Committee in June include tax cuts that would mostly benefit the richest one percent of Americans and foreign investors.

Congress absolutely should raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to generate revenue and improve the fairness of our tax code. President Biden has several proposals to do exactly that. But this is an entirely separate question from whether we should raise the debt ceiling to honor the debts the nation has already incurred and avoid an economic apocalypse.

With Minnesota poised to enact worldwide combined reporting of corporate income taxes, business lobbyists are pulling out all the stops to make state lawmakers believe the apocalypse is upon them.

The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.

President Biden’s latest budget proposal includes trillions of dollars of new revenue that would be paid by the richest Americans, both directly through increases in personal income, Medicare and estate taxes, and indirectly through increases in corporate income taxes.

President Biden’s budget proposal presents a bold vision for what tax justice should look like in America. The provisions would raise substantial revenue, fund important priorities and increase tax fairness.

In recent years, lawmakers have been quick to push for phased-in tax cuts or cuts attached to trigger mechanisms. These policy tools push the implementation of tax cuts outside of the current budget window with a predetermined phase-in schedule or a mathematical formula tied to state revenue trends.