South Carolina
State Rundown 5/9: Iowa Digs a New Hole as Other States Try to Avoid or Climb Out of Theirs
• By ITEP Staff
This week we have news of a destructive tax cut plan finally approved in Iowa just as one was narrowly avoided in Kansas. Tax debates in Minnesota and Missouri will go down to the wire. And residents of Arizona and Colorado are considering progressive revenue solutions to their states' education funding crises.
State Rundown 5/3: Progressive Revenue Solutions to Fiscal Woes Gaining Traction
• By ITEP Staff
This week, Arizona teachers continued to strike over pay issues and advocates unveiled a progressive revenue solution they hope to put before voters, while a progressive income tax also gained support as part of a resolution to Illinois's budget troubles. Iowa and Missouri legislators continued to try to push through unsustainable tax cuts before their sessions end. And Minnesota and South Carolina focused on responding to the federal tax-cut bill.
State Rundown 4/13: Teacher Strikes, Special Sessions, Federal Cuts Haunting States
• By ITEP Staff
This Friday the 13th is a spooky one for many state lawmakers, as past bad fiscal decisions have been coming back to haunt them in the form of teacher strikes and walk-outs in Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, policymakers in Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Utah all attempted to exorcise negative consequences of the federal tax-cut bill from their tax codes. And our What We're Reading section includes yet another stake to the heart…
What to Expect if the Supreme Court Allows for Online Sales Tax Collection
• By Carl Davis
Online shopping is hardly a new phenomenon. And yet states and localities still lack the authority to require many Internet retailers to collect the sales taxes that their locally based, brick and mortar competitors have been collecting for decades.
Amazon’s Local, State and Federal Tax Issues Explained
• By ITEP Staff
President Trump’s latest Twitter target, the Amazon Corporation, is now under the microscope for its state and local tax avoidance. In a Thursday tweet, the President claimed that “[u]nlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments.” Such a statement is a startling reversal for a president who previously said his own ability to avoid paying income taxes “makes me smart.”
State Rundown 3/22: Some Spring State Tax Debates in Full Bloom, Others Just Now Surfacing
• By ITEP Staff
The onset of spring this week proved to be fertile ground for state fiscal policy debates. A teacher strike came to an end in West Virginia as another seems ready to begin in Oklahoma. Budgets were finalized in Florida, West Virginia, and Wyoming, are set to awaken from hibernation in Missouri and Virginia, and are being hotly debated in several other states. Meanwhile Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, and Minnesota continued to grapple with implications of the…
State Rundown 3/8: March Tax Debates “In Like a Lion”
• By ITEP Staff
This week was very active for state tax debates. Georgia, Idaho, and Oregon passed bills reacting to the federal tax cut, as Maryland and other states made headway on their own responses. Florida lawmakers sent a harmful "supermajority" constitutional amendment to voters. New Jersey now has two progressive revenue raising proposals on the table (and a need for both). Louisiana ended one special session with talks of yet another. And online sales taxes continued to…
What the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Means for States – A Guide to Impacts and Options
• By ITEP Staff
The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has major implications for budgets and taxes in every state, ranging from immediate to long-term, from automatic to optional, from straightforward to indirect, from certain to unknown, and from revenue positive to negative. And every state can expect reduced federal investments in shared public priorities like health care, education, public safety, and basic infrastructure, as well as a reduced federal commitment to reducing economic inequality and…
Charleston Post-Courier: An Abuse of Charitable Giving?
January 14, 2018
Under the new law, some wealthy South Carolinians may actually make a 37 percent profit, risk-free, by making charitable contributions to Exceptional SC, a nonprofit fund created by the state Legislature to administer scholarships to students with disabilities attending private schools. That’s according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. South Carolina has […]
State Rundown 1/12: Tax Cut Tunnel Vision Threatens to Bore State Budget Holes Even Deeper
• By ITEP Staff
As states continue to sift through wreckage of the federal tax cut bill to try to determine how they will be affected, two things should be clear to everyone: the richest people in every state just got a massive federal tax cut, and federal funding for shared priorities like education and health care is certain to continue to decline. State leaders who care about those priorities should consider asking those wealthy beneficiaries of the federal…
State Rundown 1/4: Will States Show Resolve in a Challenging Year?
• By ITEP Staff
This week marks the beginning of what is bound to be a wild year for state tax and budget debates. Essentially every state is already working to sort through the complicated ramifications of the federal tax cuts passed in December, including Kansas, Michigan, Montana, and New Jersey highlighted below. These and other states will have important decisions to make about how to incorporate, reject, or mitigate various aspects of the new federal law, and will…
NPR: This Tax Loophole for Wealthy Donors Just Got Bigger
December 29, 2017
One of the changes, according to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, which advocates for a “fair and sustainable” tax system, allows far more wealthy donors in 10 states to turn a profit through “donations” to private school scholarships. Yes, you read that right. If your income is high enough, you can actually make […]
How the Final GOP-Trump Tax Bill Would Affect South Carolina Residents’ Federal Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
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- and middle-income Americans. The bill would go into effect in 2018 but the provisions directly affecting families and individuals would all expire after 2025, with […]
The Final Trump-GOP Tax Plan: National and 50-State Estimates for 2019 & 2027
• By ITEP Staff
The final Trump-GOP tax law provides most of its benefits to high-income households and foreign investors while raising taxes on many low- and middle-income Americans. The bill goes into effect in 2018 but the provisions directly affecting families and individuals all expire after 2025, with the exception of one provision that would raise their taxes. To get an idea of how the bill will affect Americans at different income levels in different years, this analysis…
Private Schools Donors Likely to Win Big from Expanded Loophole in Tax Bill
• By Carl Davis
For years, private schools around the country have been making an unusual pitch to prospective donors: give us your money, and you’ll get so many state and federal tax breaks in return that you may end up turning a profit. Under tax legislation being considered in Congress right now, that pitch is about to become even more persuasive.
Tax Bill Would Increase Abuse of Charitable Giving Deduction, with Private K-12 Schools as the Biggest Winners
• By Carl Davis
In its rush to pass a major rewrite of the tax code before year’s end, Congress appears likely to enact a “tax reform” that creates, or expands, a significant number of tax loopholes.[1] One such loophole would reward some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals with a strategy for padding their own bank accounts by “donating” to support private K-12 schools. While a similar loophole exists under current law, its size and scope would be dramatically…
State Rundown 12/7: States Try to Plan While Awaiting Federal Tax Decisions
• By ITEP Staff
Though most eyes were on Congress rather than states this week, several states have been taking stock of their fiscal situations. Wyoming lawmakers considered ways to resolve budget shortfalls, Kansas and New Mexico legislators got some minor good news about their states' revenues, their counterparts in Minnesota and Vermont grappled with less encouraging revenue news, and those in West Virginia were just happy to hear their revenues had at least met expectations for once.
How the House and Senate Tax Bills Would Affect South Carolina Residents’ Federal Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
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 South Carolina residents.
National and 50-State Impacts of House and Senate Tax Bills in 2019 and 2027
• By ITEP Staff
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. National and 50-State data available to download.
Mick Mulvaney and the 19 States Paying Higher Taxes Under the Senate Tax Bill
• By Steve Wamhoff
One of the more surprising findings of ITEP’s recent estimates on the Senate tax bill is that 19 states would pay more overall in federal taxes if the bill becomes law. This is not just an increase in the personal income taxes paid (which would happen in some states under the House bill). This is an increase in their net federal taxes overall, even including the assumed benefits of corporate tax cuts and estate tax…
Revised Senate Plan Would Raise Taxes on at Least 29% of Americans and Cause 19 States to Pay More Overall
• By ITEP Staff
The tax bill reported out of the Senate Finance Committee on Nov. 16 would raise taxes on at least 29 percent of Americans and cause the populations of 19 states to pay more in federal taxes in 2027 than they do today.
How the Revised Senate Tax Bill Would Affect South Carolina Residents’ Federal Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
The Senate tax bill released last week would raise taxes on some families while bestowing immense benefits on wealthy Americans and foreign investors. In South Carolina, 51 percent of the federal tax cuts would go to the richest 5 percent of residents, and 11 percent of households would face a tax increase, once the bill is fully implemented.
Analysis of the House Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• By Matthew Gardner, Meg Wiehe, Steve Wamhoff
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was introduced on Nov. 2 in the House of Representatives, would raise taxes on some Americans and cut taxes on others while also providing significant savings to foreign investors.
How the House Tax Proposal Would Affect South Carolina Residents’ Federal Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
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…
Trickle-Down Dries Up: States without personal income taxes lag behind states with the highest top tax rates
• By Carl Davis, Nick Buffie
Lawmakers who support reducing or eliminating state personal income taxes typically claim that doing so will spur economic growth. Often, this claim is accompanied by the assertion that states without income taxes are booming, and that their success could be replicated by any state that abandons its income tax. To help evaluate these arguments, this study compares the economic performance of the nine states without broad-based personal income taxes to their mirror opposites—the nine states…
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