Anti-tax activists’ convoluted claims that the rich pay too much in taxes broke new ground with an op-ed published last week in the Wall Street Journal. Penned by former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and John Early, a former official of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the piece is particularly misleading. The so-called evidence in support of their argument against raising taxes on the rich fails to correctly calculate effective tax rates.
Inequality
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blog March 2, 2020 The Latest Wildly Misleading Argument Against Taxing the Rich
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blog February 21, 2020 Tax Cuts Floated by White House Advisors Are an Attempt to Deflect from TCJA’s Failings
Now that multiple data points reveal the current administration, which promised to look out for the common man, is, in fact, presiding over an upward redistribution of wealth, the public is being treated to pasta policymaking in which advisors are conducting informal public opinion polling by throwing tax-cut ideas against the wall to see if any stick. But the intent behind these ideas is as transparent as a glass noodle.
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blog February 12, 2020 2021 Trump Budget Continues 40-Year Trickle-Down Economic Agenda
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may as well have been called the Promise for Austerity Later Act.
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blog January 14, 2020 White House Council of Economic Advisers Crows about Lowest-Income Americans Being Infinitesimally “Wealthier”
When the White House Council of Economic Advisors last week tweeted that the poorest 50 percent of Americans’ wealth is growing 3 times faster than the wealth of the top 1 percent, we were skeptical. As it turns out, the CEA’s tweet is a reminder that the poorest 50 percent wealth grew twice as fast during Barack Obama’s second term than it has under Trump, but to this day remains far below its pre-recession share and significantly less than what it was 30 years ago.
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blog January 13, 2020 Time to Throw Cucumbers
A basic understanding and idea of fairness is a trait we share with intelligent primates, which is precisely why more than two years ago as Congress was debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the American public disapproved of the tax bill.
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media mention October 16, 2019 Real Change: Fishing for Equity in a Regressive Tax System
“It’s always about race, and it’s always about taxes,” said Misha Hill, a policy analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). ITEP is the source of the… -
blog October 15, 2019 Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s New Book Reminds Us that Tax Injustice Is a Choice
Cue Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. In their new book, The Triumph of Injustice, the economists, who already jolted the world with their shocking data on exploding income inequality and wealth inequality, tell us to stop acting like we are paralyzed when it comes to tax policy. There are answers and solutions. And in about 200 surprisingly readable pages, they provide them.
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blog October 2, 2019 How a Federal Wealth Tax Can Help the Economy
A New York Times article explained that proponents of a federal wealth tax hope to address exploding inequality but then went on to list the fears of billionaires and economic policymakers, finding that “the idea of redistributing wealth by targeting billionaires is stirring fierce debates at the highest ranks of academia and business, with opponents arguing it would cripple economic growth, sap the motivation of entrepreneurs who aspire to be multimillionaires and set off a search for loopholes.” A wealth tax will not damage our economy and instead would likely improve it. Here’s why.
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blog September 27, 2019 The Nation’s Income Inequality Challenge Explained in Charts
Income inequality has reached its highest level since the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking the measure more than 50 years ago, according to recent data. While recent Census data show modest increases in median household income and average hourly wages—numbers anti-tax politicians and pundits have used to deny rising inequality—a deeper look at some of the latest numbers reveals a decades-long trend of widening economic inequality.
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blog September 12, 2019 Why Are Ideologues Trying to Downplay Poverty and Economic Inequality?
Our elected officials should pause and check the pulse of the nation. The public is aware of the great income divide and likely isn’t keen on an agenda that would use sleight of hand to “reduce” poverty and spend less on domestic programs—particularly when that agenda is in tandem with using the tax code to further boost income for the wealthy.
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blog September 10, 2019 How Tax Policy Can Help Mitigate Poverty, Address Income Inequality
Analysts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have produced multiple recent briefs and reports that provide insight on how current and proposed tax policies affect family economic security and income inequality.
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blog September 4, 2019 Why Local Jurisdictions’ Heavy Reliance on Fines and Fees Is a Tax Policy Issue
The exposé (Addicted to Fines: Small Towns Are Dangerously Dependent) raises two important issues that policymakers have the power to address. One, lack of revenue at the local level is linked to a broader challenge with state tax systems. Two, fines and fees often entrap lower-income people in a cycle of debt and, in some jurisdictions, ultimately criminalize poverty by casting unpaid fines as misdemeanor crimes.
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map August 30, 2019 Where Does Your State Fall on the ITEP Tax Inequality Index?
The vast majority of state and local tax systems exacerbate the economic divide by taxing low- and middle-income families at higher rates than the wealthy. This map distills an exhaustive… -
blog August 2, 2019 Opportunity Zones Have Nothing to Do with Reparations, Except …
Among other things, this blog highlights how federal, state and local policies systematically work to reinforce the racial wealth gap by, for example, using the tax code to redistribute the nation’s wealth to billionaire developers and keeping low-income people of color in a perpetual cycle of debt through fines and fees to fund local governments. Opportunity zones and the top-heavy 2017 tax law are emblematic of a long history of policymaking that advantages wealthy white families.
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blog June 4, 2019 File Under “No Surprise”: Wealthiest Taxpayers Use Offshore Tax Shelters More Than the Rest of Us, New Research Finds
Tax evasion matters. It drains needed revenues from the public treasury, and saps public confidence in rules of the game. A recent Pew Research poll finds that 60 percent of… -
blog May 17, 2019 Bootstraps Remain an Ineffective Tool for Combatting Poverty
Policymakers and the public widely agree that economic inequality is the social policy problem of our age. It threatens the livelihoods of millions of children and adults, and it even threatens our democracy. Although some say Americans could fix it themselves by simply rolling up their sleeves, as a sub-headline in a March U.S. News and World Report column implied, the reality is different.
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report April 12, 2019 The Case For Progressive Revenue Policies
Income inequality is a national challenge. And inadequate federal revenue is a challenge that the nation will eventually have to reckon with. This chart book makes a strong case for why federal lawmakers should seriously consider progressive revenue-raising options.
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blog March 22, 2019 Unfair State Tax Codes Also Exacerbate Racial Inequity
A 2019 ITEP analysis found that Black and Latinx households are overrepresented in the lowest-income quintiles; while they represent about 22 percent of overall tax returns, they account for 30 percent of the poorest quintile of taxpayers.
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blog January 30, 2019 Why We Should Talk about Progressive Taxes Despite Billionaires’ Objections
It was the tone-deaf remark heard ‘round the world. Last week on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that furloughed government employees who hadn’t been paid in a… -
report October 11, 2018 Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide
A newly released report by Prosperity Now and the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy, Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide, finds that the TCJA not only adds unnecessary fuel to the growing problem of overall economic inequality, but also supercharges an already massive racial wealth divide to an alarming extent.
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blog September 12, 2018 Observations from Census Data on Poverty and Income
Today’s poverty and income data show that income continues to concentrate at the top; in fact, the top 20 percent continue to capture 51.5 percent of income. Meanwhile, average income for the poorest 20 percent of households is less today than it was 18 years ago.
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blog August 15, 2018 1964: Unconditional War on Poverty; 2018: Unconditional War on the Poor
During his first State of the Union address in January 1964, Lyndon Baines Johnson declared a War on Poverty in response to a national poverty rate of more than 19… -
blog June 27, 2018 Rigging the System and Poor Shaming (Rightly) Are Incompatible Political Strategies
The absurdity of blaming poor and moderate-income people for their circumstances is close to running its course as an effective political tool, particularly as some elected officials more boldly assert… -
blog February 20, 2018 Why We’re Not Eternally Grateful for $1,000 Crumbs
Two narratives that intentionally obscure who benefits from the tax law are emerging. One focuses on the personal income tax cuts that will result in an increase in net take-home pay for many employees once their employers adjust withholding. Anecdotes abound of working people getting a $100 or more increase, after taxes, per paycheck, but the reality is that most workers will receive a lot less than that. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1 percent of households will receive an average annual tax break of $55,000, an amount that nearly eclipses the nation’s median household income.
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blog December 4, 2017 They Can’t Help Themselves: GOP Leaders Reveal True Intent Behind Tax Overhaul
The hand-written scrawls in the margins of the hastily written 500-page Senate tax bill had barely dried when lawmakers began to reveal the true motivation behind their rush to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s tax code.