North Carolina
Politifact: Roy Cooper says Pat McCrory raised taxes on the middle class ‘in 67 different ways’
October 18, 2016
“A 2015 study from the liberal groups Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and The Budget & Tax Center found that the bottom 20 percent of North Carolinians paid taxes equivalent to 9.2 percent of their income, while the top 1 percent paid taxes equivalent to 5.3 percent of their income.” Read more
Indy Week: The Durham City Council Gave a Biotech Company $77,000. Here’s Why That’s a Bad Idea.
October 3, 2016
“Indeed, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded in a 2013 report that ‘tax incentives are rarely the deciding factor in whether a business chooses to hire or invest within a state’s borders.’ And a 2015 analysis by the policy resource center Good Jobs First of the state’s One North Carolina Fund found […]
State Tax Codes as Poverty Fighting Tools
• By Aidan Davis, Meg Wiehe
Despite this unlevel playing field states create for their poorest residents through existing policies, many state policymakers have proposed (and in some cases enacted) tax increases on the poor under the guise of "tax reform," often to finance tax cuts for their wealthiest residents and profitable corporations.
Governing: Back-to-School Tax Holidays Losing Popularity Among Lawmakers
August 30, 2016
“[Tax holidays] don’t help lower-income people much either, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).” Read more
Achieving Sustainable Infrastructure Revenue with Gas Tax Reform
• By Carl Davis
This brief outlines the causes of Louisiana's infrastructure revenue shortfall and offers recommendations for how the state can achieve "sufficient increased levels of recurring funding to address the transportation backlog in highway and bridge maintenance needs in Louisiana," as per the Task Force's mandate.
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Tennessee Now Holds Sales Tax Holiday on Same Weekend as Georgia
August 8, 2016
Seventeen states, primarily in the Southeast, stand to lose more than $300 million in tax revenue because they waive sales taxes on back-to-school items and other goods, including hunting gear, energy-efficient appliances and severe weather preparedness, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with offices in Washington, D.C., […]
Minnesota Politics: Strapped states cancel sales-tax holidays
August 5, 2016
The Bay State isn’t the only state to forgo its sales-tax holiday in order to raise additional funds. Kansas, North Carolina, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, state legislators are among those that have also decided against holding new tax holidays or reinstating them during the last few years, and they’ll be saving money as a […]
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Tennessee now holds sales tax holiday on same weekend as Georgia
July 28, 2016
“Seventeen states, primarily in the Southeast, stand to lose more than $300 million in tax revenue because they waive sales taxes on back-to-school items and other goods, including hunting gear, energy-efficient appliances and severe weather preparedness, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with offices in Washington, D.C., […]
Why Sales Taxes Should Apply to Services
• By Carl Davis
Read this Policy Brief in PDF here. General sales taxes are an important revenue source for state governments, accounting for close to one-third of state tax collections nationwide. But most state sales taxes have a damaging structural flaw: they typically apply to most sales of goods, such as books and computers, but exempt most services […]
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
• By Meg Wiehe
This brief was updated July 2018 Read this Policy Brief in PDF here. Sales taxes are an important revenue source, composing close to half of all state tax revenues.[1] But sales taxes are also inherently regressive because the lower a family’s income, the more the family must spend on goods and services subject to the […]
Indy Week: Meet N.C. Republicans’ Latest Plan to Lock In Trickle Down
June 22, 2016
“That’s because the most obvious new revenue stream would be a sales tax increase or expansion, which hits lower-income families the hardest, as they spend a larger portion of their incomes on items and services than do wealthier people. Thus, a greater percentage of their incomes will go to sales taxes than rich people’s will. […]
State Treatment of Itemized Deductions
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Meg Wiehe
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 […]
North Carolina Budget and Tax Center: North Carolina’s “Tax Swap” Gives Biggest Breaks to the Wealthiest, Undermines Public Investments for All
• By ITEP Staff
“Efforts to rely more on the state sales tax and less on the income tax to support public services have shifted tax obligations to less affluent North Carolinians, while saving the wealthiest the most money, and reduced resources available for public investments that build a strong economy.” Read full report
Higher Education Income Tax Deductions and Credits in the States
• 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 […]
NewsNet5: PolitiFact: Was Kasich’s tax cut the largest in the nation?
March 16, 2016
“Ohio is among the states that come up in discussions about big tax cuts. But was Kasich’s truly the largest in the nation? “There are at least half a dozen reasons why there has to be an asterisk after that sentence,” said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a […]
North Carolina Tax and Justice Center: Prosperity Watch Issue 58, No. 3: State EITC allows working North Carolinians keep more of what they earn, boosts economy
• By ITEP Staff
Low- and middle-income taxpayers in North Carolina pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthiest taxpayers in the state. This inequity in North Carolina’s tax code makes it difficult for working families to make ends meet and further challenges the state’s ability to invest in communities and […]
Fayetteville Observer: Live Wire: Reports indicate undocumented immigrants pay lots of taxes
January 12, 2016
“In the public debates over federal immigration reform, sufficient and accurate information about the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants is often lacking, said an April 2 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, D.C. “The reality is the 11.4million undocumented immigrants living in the United States pay billions of dollars in […]
North Carolina Tax and Budget Center: BTC REPORTS: Doubling Down on a Losing Strategy – More Income Tax Cuts Will Grow Budget Shortfalls, Not the Economy
• By ITEP Staff
North Carolina policymakers have proposed another round of income tax cuts on top of those they passed in 2013. Senate Bill 526 would cost at least $1.4 billion by 2017, causing a new wave of cuts to services North Carolinians rely on each day and compounding the problems created by the tax cuts passed two […]
North Carolina Budget and Tax Center: FACTSHEET: Keep Arbitrary Tax & Spending Limits Out of North Carolina – Vote No on Senate Bill 607
• By ITEP Staff
A suite of severe changes to the state constitution laid out in Senate Bill 607 would undermine the foundations of the North Carolina economy and make our current challenges much worse. The bill changes the state constitution in three ways: 1. Limits spending on education, health, and other services through a rigid, arbitrary, and fundamentally […]
North Carolina Budget and Tax Center: BTC REPORTS: Diminished Expectations and the Resulting Drag on NC’s Economy – A Summary of the 2015-17 Budget
• By ITEP Staff
The budget North Carolina will live under through June of 2017 will sharply constrain the state’s ability to make public investments crucial to promoting widespread prosperity and a growing economy. Read the full report here
Camel City Dispatch: 3rd Shift… Suffer the Little Children… Busting the Budget in this Age of Swine
October 5, 2015
““Middle- and low-income wage earners won’t see a meaningful boost from the tax cuts. But they will feel the bite of an expanded sales tax that applies to the cost of auto and household repairs. And they’ll see a state in decline, its public schools strapped, its public employees stiffed for yet another year and […]
The Chronicle: Editorial: Investment not shown in state budget
October 2, 2015
“Meg Wiehe, state tax policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advocates tax fairness, says North Carolina is virtually alone in the nation in giving away the fruits of recovery. “It’s very counter to what we’ve seen in other states where revenue has come back and states […]
Citizen-Times: Legislature revs up tax on car repair, other services
September 28, 2015
“Here are figures from the N.C. Justice Center’s Budget and Tax Center summarizing the way tax changes in the new state budget bill will affect people at different levels of income. They are derived from a database of information on North Carolina taxpayers maintained by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. The figures […]
The News & Observer: An NC budget that chooses decline over investment
September 21, 2015
“Middle- and low-income wage earners won’t see a meaningful boost from the tax cuts. But they will feel the bite of an expanded sales tax that applies to the cost of auto and household repairs. And they’ll see a state in decline, its public schools strapped, its public employees stiffed for yet another year […]
News and Observer: An NC budget that chooses decline over investment
September 19, 2015
It is too generous to call the new state budget a spending plan. It is a spending reaction. Leaders should have a plan, a goal. This is a budget drawn by ideologues who blinked. Much of what is laid out in the $21.7 billion budget is determined by mandatory responses to growth in education and […]
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