New York
Read this Policy Brief in PDF Form Map of State Treatment of Itemized Deductions Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia allow a group of income tax breaks known as “itemized deductions.” [1] Itemized deductions are designed to help defray a wide variety of personal expenditures that affect a taxpayer’s ability to pay taxes, including charitable […]
New York Times: Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer
May 31, 2016
“This may seem negligible to the state’s wealthy and middle class, but not to a poor family with a breadwinner struggling at the margins. The method chosen is deporable – cutting the state share of the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers, a federal program widely praised as an effective life from poverty. “It’s one […]
Christian Today: New York bishop defends undocumented workers, decries mass deportation plan
May 27, 2016
“The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that undocumented immigrants pay $11.6 billion per year in income, sales and property taxes.” Read more
Equal Times: The Panama Papers’ impact in the United States: The calm before the storm?
April 19, 2016
“A very small number of states are notorious for allowing pretty much anybody to start a company in the state without requiring even the most basic information,” says Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy with Citizens for Tax Justice, to the New York-based online news publication International Business Times. […]
New York Times: Need to Hide Some Income? You Don’t Have to Go to Panama
April 8, 2016
“In Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware, it’s possible to create these shell corporations with virtually no questions asked,” said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.” Read more
New York Times: Panama Papers Leak Casts Light on a Law Firm Founded on Secrecy
April 7, 2016
“Panama isn’t the real story,” said Matt Gardner, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group based in Washington. “This leak is giving a window into a much broader world, but it should be understood as giving a window into how things work in the U.S. as well.” Read […]
Higher Education Income Tax Deductions and Credits in the States
March 22, 2016 • By Carl Davis
Read full report in PDF Download detailed appendix with state-by-state information on deductions and credits (Excel) Every state levying a personal income tax offers at least one deduction or credit designed to defray the cost of higher education. In theory, these policies help families cope with rising tuition prices by incentivizing college savings or partially […]
Undocumented Immigrants’ State & Local Tax Contributions (2016)
February 24, 2016 • By Lisa Christensen Gee, Meg Wiehe
This report was updated in March 2017 Read as a PDF. (Includes Full Appendix of State-by-State Data) Report Landing Page Public debates over federal immigration reform 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 […]
Fiscal Policy Institute: New York’s Regressive Tax Structure and the 1% Plan for Tax Fairness
February 17, 2016
Those in the wealthiest 1% are taking home the lion’s share of income gains, yet they nevertheless pay a smaller share of their income in combined state and local taxes than lower and middle-income families. New York households with incomes under $100,000 pay higher effective state and local tax rates, ranging from 10.4% to 12%, […]
When thinking of tax havens, one generally pictures notorious zero-tax Caribbean islands like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. However, we can also find a tax haven a lot closer to home in the state of Delaware - a choice location for U.S. business formation. A loophole in Delaware's tax code is responsible for the loss of billions of dollars in revenue in other U.S. states, and its lack of incorporation transparency makes it a magnet for people looking to create anonymous shell companies, which individuals and corporations can use to evade an inestimable amount in federal and foreign taxes. The…
Politico: Getting to be extenders time
November 30, 2015
“YOUR CYBER MONDAY TAX UPDATE: Carl Davis of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy notes that this year will be the first holiday season that Amazon — in the midst of a massive national expansion of its distribution network — collects sales tax in a majority of states. In fact, ITEP notes that […]
CBS News: Why Pfizer is so bent on lowering its tax rate
November 2, 2015
“According to Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the New York-based company has 151 subsidiaries in known tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. Pfizer also claims to have lost $16 billion in the U.S. over the past five years while earning about $80 billion overseas. Between 2010 and […]
The U.S. Census Bureau released data in September showing that the share of Americans living in poverty remains high. In 2014, the national poverty rate was 14.8 percent - statistically unchanged from the previous year. However, the poverty rate remains 2.3 percentage points higher than it was in 2007, before the Great Recession, indicating that recent economic gains have not yet reached all households and that there is much room for improvement. The 2014 measure translates to more than 46.7 million - more than 1 in 7 - Americans living in poverty. Most state poverty rates also held steady between…
New York Daily News: #Undocumoney Campaign to Show How Much Undocumented Immigrants Contribute to U.S Economy
September 10, 2015
“According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States collectively paid $11.84 billion in state and local taxes in 2012.” Read more
Policy Mic: What Republicans Don’t Want You to Know About “Securing the Border”
August 24, 2015
New York’s place on that list is especially salient given its place as the largest of the estimated 200 “sanctuary cities” across the country. The designation reflects a decision by local governments to protect undocumented immigrants from federal law enforcement. This makes it easier to collect taxes — undocumented immigrants paid $11.84 billion in state […]
Slate: Don’t Fall for Back-to-School Tax Holidays
August 14, 2015
If shoppers are simply shifting their spending to save on taxes, that means the states are losing revenue. That’s certainly the position of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that estimates the popular break will cost the states offering it $300 million this year. “Revenues lost through sales tax holidays […]
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
July 22, 2015 • By Lisa Christensen Gee
Lawmakers in many states have enacted "sales tax holidays" (at least 17 states will hold them in 2015), to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, computers and other items. While these holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, their benefits are minimal. This policy brief examines the many problems associated with sales tax holidays and concludes that they have more political than policy benefits.
New York Mag: Rick Perry, Republicans, and the African-American Vote
July 9, 2015
Empowering state and local governments would make African-Americans more vulnerable to the whims of the very governments that have served them poorly. The state and local tax base is highly regressive, with Perry’s Texas being among the worst offenders. (The poorest 20 percent of Texans pay 12.5 percent of their income in state and local […]
The Journal News: Raising the Sales Tax, for Better or Worse
July 7, 2015
The downside, not expressed by City Hall, is that sales taxes are regressive — meaning they hurt the poorest citizens the most. That’s because the tax, obviously, only applies to money spent and not money saved. Since the poor tend to save little or not all, they take a greater financial hit. According to a […]
Read this report in PDF form Introduction For years, academics and transportation experts have been discussing the possibility of taxing drivers for each mile they travel on the nation’s roads. This “vehicle miles traveled tax” (VMT tax) could either supplement or replace the existing gas tax as the primary method of funding transportation infrastructure. To […]
Washington Post: States are Racing to See Who Can Give Rich People a Bigger Tax Break on Their Yachts
June 22, 2015
It’s true that lower taxes might bring new customers into the market, which would be great for the yacht industry. Yet every dollar spent on new boats is a dollar that a rich customer isn’t spending on something else. Favoritism for yacht manufacturers and dealers helps them only at the expense of all the other […]
Local Progress: Progressive Policies for Raising Municipal Revenue
June 16, 2015
This report lays out a set of policy and political interventions that cities, regions, and states can make to increase municipal revenue and to make their collections more progressive. Cities have historically suffered enormous budget shortfalls and after the Great Recession, available funds depleted even more drastically. Read the full report here.
New York Times: Kansas Tax Cutting Model Tarnished by Sales Tax Increase
June 15, 2015
Matthew Gardner, executive director of the left-leaning, Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said Kansas’ experience makes it more difficult for other states to pursue aggressive income tax cuts. In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley couldn’t pass income tax cuts even after declaring, “We are not doing what Kansas did.” “It’s clearly a […]
The News-Herald: Amazon’s Ohio Sales Tax Collection Seen As Way To ‘Level Playing Field,’ Close Tax Loophole
June 9, 2015
Some states, however, have decided not to wait for the federal government to make the change. So far, 10 states have taken their own limited steps to expand the number of retailers that must collect sales taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. New York was first, enacting legislation in 2008 requiring […]
Fiscal Policy Institute: Property Tax Relief for Low- and Middle-Income Property New Yorkers Must Remain a Priority
May 28, 2015
Those making the least income relative to other New Yorkers would benefit more from the proposed circuit breaker than from a STAR rebate. Some 40 percent of taxpayers with incomes below $19,000 (the poorest fifth of New Yorkers) would receive a circuit breaker refund, according to an analysis of the governor’s proposal by the Institute […]
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