Congress will soon debate provisions from the Trump tax law that are set to expire at the end of 2025, as well as other tax policies that Trump proposed on the campaign trail. Here we examine what’s at stake as lawmakers consider significant changes to our tax system.
Income Taxes
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brief December 12, 2024 Federal Tax Debate 2025
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brief December 5, 2024 How Local Governments Raise Revenue — and What it Means for Tax Equity
Local taxes are key to thriving communities. One in seven tax dollars in the U.S.—about $886 billion annually—is levied by local governments in support of education, infrastructure, public health, and other priorities. Three fourths of this funding comes from property taxes, 18 percent comes from sales and excise taxes, and six percent comes from income taxes.
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blog November 26, 2024 Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Deeply Regressive Tax Plan
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called the legislature back to the capitol the day after the national election to take up his plan to overhaul the state’s tax system during a 20-day special session. Our analysis shows the tax overhaul would worsen the inequity already rampant in Louisiana’s tax system while potentially shortchanging essential services for families across the state.
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blog November 26, 2024 Average Louisianans Will Pay for Gov. Landry’s Tax Break for the Rich
Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will not make Louisiana more competitive. Rather, they will blow a hole in the state budget while asking low- and middle-income working families to make up the difference. Gov. Landry and the Louisiana legislature would make much better use of their time looking for ways to make Louisiana’s tax structure fairer and more capable of adequately funding important priorities.
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blog November 8, 2024 Tax Justice in the Crosshairs
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.
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report October 23, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Kamala Harris’ Tax Plan
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.
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report October 7, 2024 A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
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.
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report September 13, 2024 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: Updated National and State-by-State Estimates
The TCJA Permanency Act would make permanent the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that are set to expire at the end of 2025. The legislation… -
blog September 9, 2024 The Quiet Effort to Make Single Parenthood More Expensive
After the dust settles on this year’s election, one of the most pressing issues confronting the next Congress and President will be how to deal with the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts and, more specifically, who will pay for the cost of extending some or all of those cuts. Among the more widely accepted ideas circulating on the right is to raise income taxes on single parents, more than four in five of whom are women and a disproportionate share of whom are people of color.
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map September 5, 2024 Which States Have Joined IRS Direct File?
The IRS has opened its free tax filing service called Direct File to every state for the 2025 tax filing season. Direct File was made possible by President Biden’s Inflation… -
blog August 16, 2024 Here’s a Tip: Keep the Taxation of Tips As-Is
The no tax on tips idea isn’t a new one, but it’s always been abandoned because it’s practically impossible to do without creating new avenues for tax avoidance. Despite its embrace by the candidates from both major parties, this policy idea would do little to help the roughly 4 million people who work in tipped occupations while creating a host of problems.
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blog August 14, 2024 Local Tax Trends in 2024
Many cities, counties, and townships across the country are in a difficult, or at least unstable, budgetary position. Localities are responding to these financial pressures in a variety of ways with some charging ahead with enacting innovative reforms like short-term rental and vacancy taxes, and others setting up local tax commissions to study the problem.
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blog August 6, 2024 Minnesota Stands Out for Its Moderately Progressive Tax Code
Minnesota stands apart from the rest of the country with a moderately progressive tax system that asks slightly more of the rich than of low- and middle-income families. Recent reforms signed by Gov. Tim Walz have contributed to this reality.
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report July 30, 2024 Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants
Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase.
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blog July 18, 2024 Five Tax Takeaways from 2024 State Legislative Sessions
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.
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blog June 27, 2024 Reality Interrupts the Fever Dream of Income Tax Elimination in Kentucky
Keeping the Kentucky income tax on a march to zero would mean tax hikes for working families or widespread cuts to education, health care, and other public services. Reversing course is certainly the wiser course of action.
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blog May 30, 2024 States Should Opt Into IRS Direct File as the Program is Made Permanent
While there is plenty of room to expand Direct File at the federal level, states can take matters into their own hands and bring this benefit to their residents by opting into the program.
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blog May 16, 2024 Better Tax Codes Help Boost Teacher Pay
There are a variety of factors that affect teacher pay. But one often overlooked factor is progressive tax policies that allow states to raise and provide the funding educators and their students deserve.
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blog May 9, 2024 Iowa Flat Tax Shows Why Such Policies Are a Problem Everywhere
As Iowa lawmakers change the state’s graduated personal income tax to a single flat rate, they are designing a state tax code where the rich will pay a lower rate overall than families with modest means.
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brief April 16, 2024 Is California Really a High-Tax State?
Key Findings For families of modest means, California is not a high-tax state. California taxes are close to the national average for families in the bottom 80 percent of the… -
report April 11, 2024 Fairness Matters: A Chart Book on Who Pays State and Local Taxes
State and local tax codes can do a lot to reduce inequality. But they add to the nation’s growing income inequality problem when they capture a greater share of income from low- or moderate-income taxpayers. These regressive tax codes also result in higher tax rates on communities of color, further worsening racial income and wealth divides.
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report April 9, 2024 Who Pays Taxes in America in 2024
America’s tax system is just barely progressive, and not nearly as progressive as many suggest or as progressive as it could be. There is plenty of room for lawmakers to improve the progressivity of the tax code to combat economic, wealth, and racial inequality.
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blog March 20, 2024 Eliminating Income Taxes Would Be an Expensive Giveaway
Governors and legislative leaders in a dozen states have made calls to fully eliminate their taxes on personal or corporate income, after many states already deeply slashed them over the past few years. The public deserves to know the true impact of these plans, which would inevitably result in an outsized windfall to states’ richest taxpayers, more power in the hands of wealthy households and corporations, extreme cuts to basic public services, and more deeply inequitable state tax codes.
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report March 12, 2024 Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan
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.
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blog March 11, 2024 Recent Tax Cuts Have Expanded Inequality in the States
Some states have improved tax equity by raising new revenue from the well-off and creating or expanding refundable tax credits for low- and moderate-income families in recent years. Others, however,…