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.
Louisiana
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blog November 26, 2024 Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Deeply Regressive Tax Plan
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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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January 9, 2024 Louisiana: Who Pays? 7th Edition
Louisiana Download PDF All figures and charts show 2024 tax law in Louisiana, presented at 2023 income levels. Senior taxpayers are excluded for reasons detailed in the methodology. Our analysis… -
ITEP Work in Action April 5, 2021 Louisiana Budget Project: Who Pays? Racial Injustice in Louisiana’s Tax System
Historic and current injustices – both in public policy and in society more broadly – have resulted in vast disparities in income across race and ethnicity in Louisiana. Unfortunately, our… -
ITEP Work in Action November 15, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Tax Code Is Holding Louisiana Back
Years of efforts to reform Louisiana’s regressive and overly complicated tax code have run aground in the state Legislature. The result: Louisianans pay the second-highest sales taxes in the nation, while the tax code is riddled with costly exemptions and deductions. The state’s broken tax structure is a major reason why the state lurched from budget crisis to budget crisis over the last decade and has struggled to fund critical programs and services like higher education and health care. The Advocate’s editorial board shares its thoughts on the latest report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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ITEP Work in Action November 9, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Race Equity and Taxes in Louisiana
Louisiana’s upside-down tax structure means the highest income-earners pay less than the poorest families, when measured as a percentage of income. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s “Who Pays” report lays this out in careful detail, and the latest edition breaks down the tax distribution by race. The conclusion: Black households pay a higher percentage of their income in state and local taxes than white households. Louisiana has work to do to make the tax structure fairer and reduce racial inequalities.
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ITEP Work in Action November 5, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Louisiana’s Regressive Tax Structure
Poor and middle-income families in Louisiana pay state and local taxes at a higher rate than the wealthiest families. That’s the key takeaway from the latest state-by-state breakdown of tax distribution by income groups from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Louisiana’s tax structure is the 14th most regressive in the nation.
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media mention November 3, 2018 The New Orleans Advocate: James Gill: Louisiana’s Tax System Isn’t the Most Unfair in the Nation, But It’s not for Lack of Trying
According to a study just released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, Washington State sets the regressive standard, while we rank 14th. If your income is $17,100 or less in Louisiana, you’ll pay 11.9 percent of it in taxes. That number shrinks the further you go up on the income scale and is roughly halved by the time you reach fat-cat territory. Sales and excise taxes take 9.2 percent from the poorest, and 1.2 percent from the richest.
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ITEP Work in Action October 17, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Louisiana’s Tax Code is Still Regressive
The wealthiest households in Louisiana continue to pay state and local taxes at a lower rate than those in the middle class and below, according to a new analysis that breaks down the tax rates by income brackets in every state. The report, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States found that households with incomes in the lowest 20 percent pay nearly twice as much of their income in taxes as households in the top 1 percent. Louisiana has the 14th most regressive tax code in the country, according to the report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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ITEP Work in Action October 17, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Who Pays Taxes in Louisiana?
When it comes to paying for government services, Louisiana asks a lot more of those with the fewest resources than it does of its wealthiest citizens, according to new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Thanks to a heavy reliance on sales taxes and tax exemptions that favor the wealthy, the less you earn in Louisiana, the more of you pay in taxes as a percentage of income.
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ITEP Work in Action October 17, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Analysis: Louisiana’s Regressive Tax Structure Disproportionately Affects Low-income Residents
A new study released Wednesday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Louisiana Budget Project finds that Louisiana has the 14th most unfair state and local tax system in the country, with the lowest-income Louisianans paying almost two times more in taxes as a percent of their income compared to the state’s wealthiest residents.
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October 17, 2018 Louisiana: Who Pays? 6th Edition
LOUISIANA Read as PDF LOUISIANA STATE AND LOCAL TAXES Taxes as Share of Family Income Top 20% Income Group Lowest 20% Second 20% Middle 20% Fourth 20% Next 15% Next… -
ITEP Work in Action October 12, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Federal Tax Cut Worsening Racial Wealth Divide
While President Trump and Republicans in Congress heralded the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 as a major tax cut for the middle class, the numbers don’t bear that out. A new analysis by researchers at Prosperity Now and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reveals just how much of the federal tax cut benefits went to the highest income earners, and the crumbs that were left over for low and middle-class households.
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blog October 2, 2018 Twelve States Offer Profitable Tax Shelter to Private School Voucher Donors; IRS Proposal Could Fix This
A proposed IRS regulation would eliminate a tax shelter for private school donors in twelve states by making a commonsense improvement to the federal tax deduction for charitable gifts. For years, some affluent taxpayers who donate to private K-12 school voucher programs have managed to turn a profit by claiming state tax credits and federal tax deductions that, taken together, are worth more than the amount donated. This practice could soon come to an end under the IRS’s broader goal of ending misuse of the charitable deduction by people seeking to dodge the federal SALT deduction cap.
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September 26, 2018 Tax Cuts 2.0 – Louisiana
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called… -
blog July 10, 2018 Building on Momentum from Recent Years, 2018 Delivers Strengthened Tax Credits for Workers and Families
Despite some challenging tax policy debates, a number of which hinged on states’ responses to federal conformity, 2018 brought some positive developments for workers and their families. This post updates a mid-session trends piece on this very subject. Here’s what we have been following:
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report June 27, 2018 The Other SALT Cap Workaround: Accountants Steer Clients Toward Private K-12 Voucher Tax Credits
On May 23, 2018, the IRS and Treasury Department announced that they “intend to propose regulations addressing the federal income tax treatment of certain payments made by taxpayers for which… -
ITEP Work in Action May 18, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: Black households would bear disproportionate burden of sales tax renewal
Lawmakers can address this imbalance by expanding Louisiana’s EITC. An increase of the state EITC from 3.5 percent to 7 percent of the federal EITC would offset a half-cent cent… -
ITEP Work in Action March 5, 2018 Louisiana Budget Project: On the Brink of Collapse
The backbiting and bitterness surrounding the revenue debate in Baton Rouge is wildly disproportionate to the effect on Louisiana families. As The Advocate’s Tyler Bridges reports, none of the tax bills would cost any Louisiana family more than 1 percent of their income per year. What’s really at stake in the tax debate – besides trying to fill a $1 billion hole in the budget – is whether to continue relying on a regressive sales tax, or if the burden should be shifted slightly to high-income taxpayers.
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December 16, 2017 How the Final GOP-Trump Tax Bill Would Affect Louisiana Residents’ Federal Taxes
The final tax bill that Republicans in Congress are poised to approve would provide most of its benefits to high-income households and foreign investors while raising taxes on many low-… -
December 6, 2017 How the House and Senate Tax Bills Would Affect Louisiana Residents’ Federal Taxes
The House passed its “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” November 16th and the Senate passed its version December 2nd. Both bills would raise taxes on many low- and middle-income families in every state and provide the wealthiest Americans and foreign investors substantial tax cuts, while adding more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years. The graph below shows that both bills are skewed to the richest 1 percent of Louisiana residents.
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November 13, 2017 How the Revised Senate Tax Bill Would Affect Louisiana Residents’ Federal Taxes
The Senate tax bill released last week would raise taxes on some families while bestowing immense benefits on wealthy Americans and foreign investors. In Louisiana, 50 percent of the federal tax cuts would go to the richest 5 percent of residents, and 9 percent of households would face a tax increase, once the bill is fully implemented.
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November 6, 2017 How the House Tax Proposal Would Affect Louisiana Residents’ Federal Taxes
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was introduced on November 2 in the House of Representatives, includes some provisions that raise taxes and some that cut taxes, so the net effect for any particular family’s federal tax bill depends on their situation. Some of the provisions that benefit the middle class — like lower tax rates, an increased standard deduction, and a $300 tax credit for each adult in a household — are designed to expire or become less generous over time. Some of the provisions that benefit the wealthy, such as the reduction and eventual repeal of the estate tax, become more generous over time. The result is that by 2027, the benefits of the House bill become increasingly generous for the richest one percent compared to other income groups.
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October 4, 2017 GOP-Trump Tax Framework Would Provide Richest One Percent in Louisiana with 63.7 Percent of the State’s Tax Cuts
The “tax reform framework” released by the Trump administration and congressional Republican leaders on September 27 would not benefit everyone in Louisiana equally. The richest one percent of Louisiana residents would receive 63.7 percent of the tax cuts within the state under the framework in 2018. These households are projected to have an income of at least $568,200 next year. The framework would provide them an average tax cut of $97,200 in 2018, which would increase their income by an average of 6.4 percent.
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August 17, 2017 In Louisiana 41.5 Percent of Trump’s Proposed Tax Cuts Go to People Making More than $1 Million
A tiny fraction of the Louisiana population (0.3 percent) earns more than $1 million annually. But this elite group would receive 41.5 percent of the tax cuts that go to Louisiana residents under the tax proposals from the Trump administration. A much larger group, 45.6 percent of the state, earns less than $45,000, but would receive just 3.1 percent of the tax cuts.