District of Columbia
Kansas May Have Saved Us All
• By Steve Wamhoff
Sitting in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, hidden in the jumble of Americana like Thomas Jefferson’s desk, Michelle Obama’s inaugural gown and the ruby slippers worn in the Wizard of Oz, is a napkin with a drawing on it. Probably one of the least known exhibits in the museum, this napkin, quietly hiding behind glass lest some child wandering from a school group wipe his nose on it, has on several…
State Rundown 5/31: Budget Woes Spurring Special Legislative Sessions
• By ITEP Staff
This week, special legislative sessions featuring tax and budget debates are underway or in the works in Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, and West Virginia, as lawmakers are also running up against regular session deadlines in Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, a legislative study in Wyoming and an independent analysis in New Jersey are both calling for tax increases to overcome budget shortfalls.
Besides Eviscerating the Safety Net, Trump Budget Would Put States in a Fiscal Bind
• By Misha Hill
There has been considerable discussion about the human impact of the Trump budget’s draconian cuts to what remains of the social safety net. A long-standing conservative talking point in response to such criticism is that states can pick up the tab when federal dollars disappear. But at a time when many states are facing budget shortfalls and the effect of federal tax reform is yet to be determined, it is outlandish to suggest that states…
Gas Taxes Increases Continue to Advance in the States
• By Carl Davis
This post was updated July 12, 2017 to reflect recent gas tax increases in Oregon and West Virginia. As expected, 2017 has brought a flurry of action relating to state gasoline taxes. As of this writing, eight states (California, Indiana, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia) have enacted gas tax increases this year, bringing the total number of states that have raised or reformed their gas taxes to 26 since 2013.
EITC Victories Await in Both Hawaii and Montana
• By Aidan Davis
Two states are on the verge of embracing a tried and tested anti-poverty policy, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In the past two weeks, lawmakers in both Hawaii and Montana passed EITC legislation, which governors in both states are expected to sign. Once officially enacted, these states will join 26 other states and the […]
3 Percent and Dropping: State Corporate Tax Avoidance in the Fortune 500, 2008 to 2015
• By Aidan Davis, Matthew Gardner, Richard Phillips
The trend is clear: states are experiencing a rapid decline in state corporate income tax revenue. Despite rebounding and even booming bottom lines for many corporations, this downward trend has become increasingly apparent in recent years. Since our last analysis of these data, in 2014, the state effective corporate tax rate paid by profitable Fortune 500 corporations has declined, dropping from 3.1 percent to 2.9 percent of their U.S. profits. A number of factors are…
New State Corporate Study: 3 Percent and Dropping
• By Aidan Davis
States are experiencing a rapid decline in state corporate income tax revenue, and the downward trend has become increasingly pronounced in recent years. Despite rebounding bottom lines for many corporations, a new ITEP report, 3 Percent and Dropping: State Corporate Tax Avoidance in the Fortune 500, 2008 to 2015,finds that effective tax rates paid by […]
State & Local Tax Contributions of Young Undocumented Immigrants (2017)
• By Meg Wiehe, Misha Hill
This report specifically examines the state and local tax contributions of undocumented immigrants who are currently enrolled or immediately eligible for DACA and the fiscal implications of various policy changes. The report includes information on the national impact (Table 1) and provides a state-by-state breakdown (Appendix 1).
Comparing the Distributional Impact of Revenue Options in Alaska
• By Aidan Davis, Carl Davis
Alaska is facing a significant budget gap because of a sharp decline in the oil tax and royalty revenue that has traditionally been relied upon to fund government. This report examines five approaches for replacing some of the oil revenue that is no longer available: enacting a broad personal income tax, state sales tax, payroll tax, investment income tax, or cutting the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). Any of the options examined in this report could…
Aidan Davis
• By ITEP Staff
Aidan is ITEP’s acting state policy director. She coordinates ITEP’s state tax policy research and advocacy agenda and works closely with policymakers, legislative staff, national and state organizations across the country to advance policy solutions that aim to achieve equitable and sustainable state and local tax systems.
Vox: Undocumented Immigrants Pay Taxes Too: Here’s How They Do It
April 19, 2017
Unauthorized workers aren’t eligible for benefits like the earned income tax credit — which is what the green box on the screen was warning Gonzalez about. Nor can they get Social Security or Medicare. But the IRS still wants unauthorized immigrants to file their taxes, and many of them do. The best estimates from the […]
Atlanta Journal Constitution: Is a flat tax right for Georgia?
April 11, 2017
That’s the problem Tharpe has with studies like the Wallethub.com survey. That 50-state look at state taxes found Georgia has a tax burden of 8.2 percent of individual personal income. The Washington, DC,-based financial services website ranked Georgia slightly better than Arizona and just behind Washington state. When I tweeted out those findings, Tharpe was quick to […]
State Rundown 4/5: Focus on Major Tax Bills Intensifies
• By ITEP Staff
This week in state tax news we saw a destructive tax cut effort defeated in Georgia, a state shutdown avoided in New York, and lawmakers hone in on major tax debates in Massachusetts, Nebraska, South Carolina, and WestVirginia. State efforts to collect taxes owed on online purchases continue to heat up as well. — Meg […]
Testimony before the Alaska House Labor & Commerce Committee On House Bill 36
• By Matthew Gardner
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the changes House Bill 36 would make to Alaska's tax treatment of pass-through income. The taxation of pass-through business entities has been a focal point of state and federal tax reform debates for over a quarter century, with a dual focus on minimizing the role of tax laws in determining the choice of business entity and on ensuring that the income of all business entities is subject…
Tax Justice Digest: Offshore Cash, Gas Tax and BAT
• By ITEP Staff
In the Tax Justice Digest we recap the latest reports, blog posts, and analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve been working on lately. Corporations Offshore Cash Hoard Grows to $2.6 Trillion U.S. corporations now hold a record $2.6 trillion offshore, a […]
International Business Times: Republican Health Care Plan: Trumpcare Gives Wealthiest 1% A $31B Taxcut
March 31, 2017
The wealthiest Americans will see the biggest benefit from the Republican plan to repeal the tax on investments and additional Medicare tax in the Republican American Health Care Act, a state-by-state analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy indicates, with California and the District of Columbia the biggest winners. The analysis indicated the […]
State Rundown 3/29: More States Looking to Raise or Protect Revenues Amid Fiscal and Federal Uncertainty
• By ITEP Staff
This week we see West Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota, and Nebraska continue to deliberate regressive tax cut proposals, as the District of Columbia considers cancelling tax cut triggers it put in place in prior years, and lawmakers in Hawaii, Washington, Kansas, and Delaware ponder raising revenues to shore up their budgets. Meanwhile, gas tax debates continue […]
Taxes and the On-Demand Economy
• By Carl Davis
A growing number of Americans are getting rides or booking short-term accommodations through online platforms such as Uber and Airbnb. This is nothing new in concept; brokers have operated for hundreds of years as go-betweens for producers and consumers. The ease with which this can be done through the Internet, however, has led to millions of people using these services, and to some of the nation's fastest-growing, high-profile businesses. The rise of this on-demand sector,…
Undocumented Immigrants’ State & Local Tax Contributions
• By Lisa Christensen Gee, Meg Wiehe, Misha Hill
Public debates over federal immigration reform, specifically around undocumented immigrants, 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 States paybillions of dollars each year in state and local taxes. Further, these tax contributions would increase significantly if all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States were granted a pathway to citizenship as part…
What to Watch in the States: State-Federal Relationship Shifting
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
So far in this series on tax policy topics to watch in 2017, we’ve covered important state debates in areas such as attempts to weaken or eliminate progressive taxes and needed updates to gas taxes and sales taxes. As if those topics weren’t enough to keep state lawmakers up at night, they will be making […]
Combined Reporting of State Corporate Income Taxes: A Primer
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Meg Wiehe
Over the past several decades, state corporate income taxes have declined markedly. One of the factors contributing to this decline has been aggressive tax avoidance on the part of large, multi-state corporations, costing states billions of dollars. The most effective approach to combating corporate tax avoidance is combined reporting, a method of taxation currently employed in more than half of the states that tax corporate income. The two most recent states to enact combined reporting…
Policy Matters Ohio: Ohio Nees a Strong Income Tax
• By ITEP Staff
Ohio’s income tax is the only major tax that is based on ability to pay. This principle was embraced by the founders of our democracy, such as Thomas Jefferson, as well as by the intellectual father of capitalism, Adam Smith. As your taxable income goes up, you pay a higher rate; for instance, income between […]
DC Fiscal Policy Institute: Revenue: Where DC Gets Its Money
• By ITEP Staff
The DC government collects revenue in a variety of ways from its residents, businesses, and the federal government. These revenues are used to fund the wide array of services provided by the District, from schools to health care to libraries to road construction. The DC government collected about $10.5 billion in revenue in fiscal year […]
State Tax & Revenue Information
• By ITEP Staff
Below is a list of notable resources for information on state taxes and revenues: Alabama Alabama Department of Revenue Alabama Department of Finance – Executive Budget Office Alabama Department of Revenue – Tax Incentives for Industry Alabama Legislative Fiscal Office Alaska Alaska Department of Revenue – Tax Division Alaska Office of Management & Budget Alaska […]
Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
• By Carl Davis, Meg Wiehe
When states shy away from personal income taxes in favor of higher sales and excise taxes, high-income taxpayers benefit at the expense of low- and moderate-income families who often face above-average tax rates to pick up the slack. This chart book demonstrates this basic reality by examining the distribution of taxes in states that have pursued these types of policies. Given the detrimental impact that regressive tax policies have on economic opportunity, income inequality, revenue…
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