ITEP State Rundown
State Rundown 3/17: Momentum for Sound Progressive Tax Reforms Continues to Build
• By ITEP Staff
We wrote last week that the inclusion of fiscal relief for states and localities in Congress’s American Rescue Plan should free up state lawmakers’ time and attention to focus on the comprehensive reforms needed to address upside-down and inadequate tax codes, and some states are already doing just that.
State Rundown 3/10: Federal Pandemic Aid Means States Can Focus on the Big Picture
• By ITEP Staff
State and local policymakers will be preoccupied for a short time with celebrating and deciphering the federal pandemic relief package approved today, but ultimately the federal aid should free them to focus on even bigger concerns such as tax codes that often fail to adequately fund core priorities even in good years and exacerbate the economic and racial inequities that this pandemic has laid bare.
State Rundown 3/4: Progressive Tax Proposals Steal the Show
• By ITEP Staff
Although lawmakers in some states continue to push for expensive and regressive tax cuts that would primarily benefit wealthy households, worsen economic and racial injustices, and undermine funding for key public services, this week’s state fiscal news is dominated by efforts to do the opposite. Leaders in the District of Columbia, Maine, Nebraska, New York, Washington, and Wyoming made recent headlines by advocating for policies that improve on upside-down tax codes and generate needed funding…
State Rundown 2/24: State Tax Debates Quickly Thaw Out with Warmer Weather
• By ITEP Staff
Warming temperatures in many parts of the country this week seem to be thawing out state fiscal debates as well. Multiple states including California, Colorado, Maryland, and New Jersey saw movement on efforts to improve tax credits for low- and middle-income families. Mississippi House lawmakers suddenly rushed through a dangerous bill to eliminate the state’s income tax and shift those taxes onto lower-income households. Montana senators also approved regressive income tax cuts and South Dakota…
State Rundown 2/17: Friction Over Tax Policy Still Generating Heat in Some Statehouses
• By ITEP Staff
Cold-hearted regressive tax proposals were pushed this week to cut income taxes on high-income households in states including Idaho, Montana, and West Virginia, while advocates for fair taxes and well-funded services continue to turn up the heat on taxing the richest residents in states like Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
State Rundown 2/11: Legalizing and Taxing Cannabis Becoming Increasingly Mainstream
• By ITEP Staff
This week, the governors of New Hampshire and West Virginia proposed to eliminate their states’ most progressive revenue sources and shift taxes even more heavily onto the middle- and low-income families who already pay the highest rates in both states. It was also a big week for proponents of legalizing recreational cannabis, as that movement made progress in Hawaii, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
State Rundown 2/4: Some Lawmakers, Governors Rising to Occasion with Progressive Tax Proposals
• By ITEP Staff
States face shifting landscapes as they attempt to deal with both emergent and longstanding issues in their tax codes and budget structures. This is particularly evident in Oklahoma, where lawmakers must adjust to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that literally redraws state boundaries by recognizing the rights of indigenous communities, but is true in every state, and lawmakers in many of them are rising to the challenge. Read below and see our blog posted today…
State Rundown 1/28: EITC Efforts a Welcome Contrast to State Tax Tug-of-War
• By ITEP Staff
Efforts to deliver and improve targeted tax credits to support low- and middle-income families proved to be unifying in Washington and Oregon, welcome developments in an otherwise divisive week in state tax debates. For example, Mississippi advocates hoping to end the state’s regressive grocery tax are up against a governor and many lawmakers pulling in the opposite direction by trying to eliminate its income tax. After Arizona residents approved an income tax increase to improve…
State Rundown 1/22: Somewhere Between a Flurry and a Blizzard of State Tax Activity So Far
• By ITEP Staff
You won’t find any images of Bernie Sanders and his mittens photoshopped into this week’s Rundown, but you will find the latest news on state fiscal debates, including proposals to generate needed funding by raising taxes on high-income households and profiting businesses in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington, as well as misguided efforts to slash taxes in Arizona, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia. Also in the news are thoughtful improvements to targeted…
State Rundown 1/14: Bad Tax Cut Ideas Prove to Be Endemic
• By ITEP Staff
As states kick off their 2021 legislative sessions, it’s clear that many governors and lawmakers are attempting to “take a mulligan” on the last year and recycle tax-slashing ideas that were already bad in 2020 and are even worse now as states try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying downturn...On a brighter note, Illinois leaders showed they did learn from the events of 2020, passing a major criminal justice reform bill and payday…
State Rundown 1/7: State Work Continues in Shadow of National Events
• By ITEP Staff
Though most people’s attention is rightly focused on events unfolding in the nation’s capital this week, state legislative debates are also underway or soon to begin in many states, including proposals to tax the rich in New York and Rhode Island, provide a boost to low-income families in California, and legalize and tax cannabis in Missouri and Rhode Island.
State Rundown 12/17: New and Old State Tax Debates Await in 2021
• By ITEP Staff
Our last Rundown of 2020 includes news of yet another misguided proposal to eliminate a state income tax, this time in Arkansas. Florida and Missouri, on the other hand, are looking to modernize their tax codes by becoming the last two states to enforce their own sales taxes on online retailers. Leaders in Maryland and Oregon, meanwhile, are working to decouple the state from unnecessary and regressive tax cuts included in the federal CARES Act.…
After the Dust Has Settled: How Progressive Tax Policy Fared in the General Election
• By Marco Guzman
While the results of the 2020 presidential election are all but set in stone—and a sign of life for progressive policy—the results of state tax ballot initiatives are more of a mixed bag. However, the overall fight for tax equity and raising more revenue to invest in people and communities is trending in the right direction.
State Rundown 11/24: Lawmakers and Families Thankful to Be Nearing End to 2020
• By ITEP Staff
Just as people will search their hearts to give thanks this week for the small and large things that got them through a difficult year, state lawmakers are also doing their best to count their blessings while keeping fingers crossed for badly needed federal relief to give them something to be truly grateful for.
State Rundown 11/13: States Can Find Inspiration in Arizona Ballot Success; Must Look to Congress for More Immediate Help
• By ITEP Staff
Although progressive tax policy doesn’t always succeed in in statehouses or voting booths, Arizona voters showed once again that when offered a clear choice, most people resoundingly support requiring fairer tax contributions from rich individuals and highly profitable corporations over allowing their schools and other shared priorities to wither and decay. Still, a similar effort in Illinois and a more complicated measure in California were defeated, and anti-tax zealots in West Virginia and many other…
State Rundown 10/28: Anti-Tax Horror Stories Proving Less Spooky in 2020
• By ITEP Staff
Even with Halloween coming up this weekend, months of dealing with the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic have made it hard to scare anyone in the closing months of 2020, which state lawmakers and residents are showing by voting in droves and supporting policies they had been more trepidatious about in recent years.
State Rundown 10/21: States Preparing Ingredients for 2021 Fiscal Debates
• By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers around the nation are already looking well past the upcoming election to the legislative debates they’ll be cooking up in 2021. In Iowa and Nebraska, anti-tax groups are thawing out regressive tax shift ideas they had put on ice earlier in the pandemic. In Delaware, a lawsuit and recent settlement have put educational and property tax inequities on the menu for the upcoming session. Meanwhile New Jersey and New York are both looking…
State Rundown 10/7: States Looking Inward for Needed Revenue
• By ITEP Staff
The biggest news for state and local fiscal debates this week was that federal fiscal relief to help with their pandemic-induced revenue crises is effectively off the table for at least another month. But if there is a silver lining to this federal inaction, it may be that it coincides with New Jersey’s success filling part of its own revenue shortfall through a millionaires tax, as well as with prominent wealth managers admitting that their…
State Rundown 9/23: Tax Justice Advanced in New Jersey, On the Ballot in Illinois
• By ITEP Staff
New Jersey leaders grabbed the biggest headlines of the week by finally agreeing to implement a much-needed and long-discussed millionaires tax to shore up the budget and improve tax fairness. And Illinois residents can begin voting tomorrow to enact a graduated income tax there. Relatedly, ITEP Research Director Carl Davis updated our research debunking the myth that progressive taxes interfere with economic growth. Cannabis legalization and taxation was a hot topic as well, as lawmakers…
State Rundown 9/11: Benefits of Progressive Taxation Getting Well-Deserved Attention
• By ITEP Staff
Readers may want to start with our “What We’re Reading” section this week, which is full of good reading on how progressive taxation is needed to fund vital public services, helpful for state and local economic growth, and popular among voters as well. In that spirit, leaders in both New Jersey and New York are looking at small taxes on stock trades to help improve their budgets and tax codes. These last couple of weeks…
State Rundown 8/26: Progressive Revenue Ideas Featured in Many States’ Fiscal Debates
• By ITEP Staff
Voters could significantly change the tax landscape through ballot measures this November regarding oil taxes in Alaska and a high-income surcharge for education funding in Arizona. Legislators are doing their part to bring progressive tax ideas to the fore as well, including a possible wealth tax in California, a millionaires tax in New Jersey, and a pied-a-terre proposal in New York. And Nebraska lawmakers reached a property tax and business tax subsidy compromise before closing…
State Rundown 8/12: States Find Themselves in New Unemployment Pickle
• By ITEP Staff
Even in statehouses, many eyes remained on Congress and President Trump this week as state lawmakers advocated for needed federal fiscal relief and debated whether they can afford to join in on the president’s executive order requiring states to partially fund a new version of enhanced unemployment benefits that have otherwise expired.
State Rundown 8/6: States Fiscal Solutions Getting Bolder
• By ITEP Staff
This week, voters in Missouri approved Medicaid expansion, Nevada lawmakers moved to amend their Constitution to raise taxes on the state’s mining industry, and leaders in California and New York continued to push for needed revenues through tax increases on their richest households.
State Rundown 7/29: There is No Offseason During a Pandemic
• By ITEP Staff
As many of the country’s major professional sports leagues attempt to return to action amid concerns that the pandemic will find a way to ruin even the best-laid plans, state legislatures find themselves in a similar boat. Lawmakers would normally be enjoying their summer breaks at this time of year, but instead are returning to work in special sessions surrounded by plexiglass and uncertainty. Read on for information on ongoing sessions in states including California,…
State Rundown 7/22: The Heat Is On
• By ITEP Staff
Temperatures and tensions are high right now across the country as Congress debates its next pandemic response and states continue to sweat through difficult decisions. Nevada lawmakers, for example, just wrapped up a special session during which they came within one vote of a proposed tax increase but ultimately chose to balance their shortfall through only funding cuts. But advocates in many states, including California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island are trying to…
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