Texas
NBC: Sales Tax Holidays Complex, Controversial, But Popular With Shoppers
July 28, 2015
Research by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy contends that increased sales during the tax holidays “have been shown to be primarily the result of consumers’ shifting the timing of their planned purchases.” That organization estimates sales tax holidays will cost states $300 million in 2015. “A two- to three-day sales tax holiday […]
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.
CNBC: Is Your State a Gas Tax Winner–Or Loser?
July 22, 2015
As states from Connecticut to California scramble to find money to fix crumbling highways, Congress once again is expected this week to put a short-term patch on the nearly insolvent federal highway trust fund. To make up the shortfall, Congress has transferred more than $53 billion from other tax revenue over the past five years, […]
Cheat Sheet: 10 Worst States in America for Fair Tax Systems
July 13, 2015
Americans generally believe that higher income households should pay a greater percentage of their incomes in taxes than lower income households. Yet the exact opposite occurs. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) finds the nationwide average effective state and local tax rates by income group are 10.9% for the poorest 20% of individuals […]
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 Washington Post: The Facts About Rick Perry And The ‘Texas Miracle’
June 9, 2015
On average, the poorest one in five Texas residents pays 12.5 percent of their annual income in taxes to the state and to local governments, among the highest rates in the country, according to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Since the poor spend more of their income making basic purchases, sales taxes […]
San Antonio Express News: Real Question Is Whether to Cut Any Tax
May 6, 2015
But fairness hasn’t been Texas’ strong suit. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released its annual analysis of the states’ tax systems in January. Texas is in the top 10 most regressive, behind Washington state and Florida. A regressive tax is one that unduly burdens those least able to pay, while the wealthy pay […]
The Chicago Sun-Times: Reform Illinois’s Tax Code
May 6, 2015
Illinois citizens are not all that prosperous, either. According to the 2013 census, Illinois per capita income is a mere $29,666 prompting the question, “Just where is the average Illinois taxpayer supposed to get the money to pay those prospective tax increases, anyway?” According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Illinois ranks 5th highest […]
KRGV (Texas): Executive Action Would Increase Tax Contributions
April 20, 2015
“According to the U.S. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the 11.4 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. paid $11.84 billion in state and local taxes in 2012. ITEP’s analysis showed another bump of $845 million under the full implementation of executive actions in 2012 and 2014. The migration policy institute said over […]
The Dallas Morning News: Tax Cuts Are Not the Answer for Texas
April 15, 2015
A recent report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities found that those who are least able to afford it pay a larger share of their incomes in state and local taxes than households that can afford to pay more. For example, Texas households with the lowest income pay almost four times as much in […]
The Daily Item: Tax the Rich More
March 16, 2015
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranks Pennsylvania at No. 6 in the Institute’s “Terrible 10” states that taxes low income earners up to seven times as much of their income in taxes as the top 1 percent are taxed on their income. Washington, Florida and Texas top the list of the “Terrible 10” […]
The Albany Times Union: Bad But Could Be Worse
March 11, 2015
New York is regularly ranked as one of the worst states in the nation for taxes. But a new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that New York’s tax policies are actually some of the best for average people. That’s because some tax structures grab a larger percentage of take-home pay of middle- […]
The Patriot News: There’s a Reason Pennsylvania Makes the Top 10 Terrible Tax States
March 11, 2015
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranks Pennsylvania at number six in the its “Terrible 10” states that tax low income earners up to seven times as much, as a percentage of income, as the top one percent are taxed. Washington, Florida and Texas top the list of the “Terrible 10” states, and Delaware, Montana […]
Dallas Business Journal: Texas Great for Businesses But Terrible for Most People
February 23, 2015
While many Lone Star State business organizations tout Texas’ tax climate when pitching corporate relocations, those same tax policies are among the worst in the nation when boiled down to the family level, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Texas has the third-most regressive tax structure in the […]
Culture Map Houston: Texas Tax Myths Shattered
February 20, 2015
If you’re living in Texas and don’t fall within the wealthiest one percent of residents, chances are you’re paying some of the highest tax rates in the nation. According to “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States,” a report recently released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy […]
Major tax overhauls are on the agenda in a record number of states, and “Who Pays?” documents in state-by-state detail the precise distribution of state income taxes, sales and excise taxes and property taxes paid by each income group as of January 2013. It is a critical baseline against which future proposals can be measured. […]
The Atlantic: Robin Hood in Reverse
January 28, 2015
But according to a new report from The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the impact of those federal tax breaks is largely offset by the burden of state and local taxes. Here’s how state and local taxes break down as a percentage of income: The richest Americans pay the least. The tax mix changes […]
Slate: Republicans Are Finally Talking About Income Inequality
January 24, 2015
The problem is that this shifts the tax burden from the top to the bottom. In other words, it’s upward redistribution of wealth that harms the least well-off. And while the vast majority of states have tax systems that hit low-income Americans the hardest, these effects are worst in conservative states, where the highest tax […]
Evanston Now: Illinois Tax System Among the Most Regressive
January 21, 2015
A new study from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says Illinois residents face one of the most regressive state and local tax systems in the nation. The institute — which defines regressive taxation as a system in which lower income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than those who […]
Salon: Defiant Sam Brownback vows to move toward zero income tax — and make Kansas even more unequal
January 16, 2015
“A study released this week underscores one of the most pernicious effects of such a tax regime: It exacerbates inequality. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that “[v]irtually every state’s tax system is fundamentally unfair,” with state and local taxes eating disproportionately into lower-income workers’ wages. But the effect was far worse in […]
WYSO: In Ohio, Poor People Pay More Of Their Incomes In Taxes Than Rich People
January 16, 2015
“A national report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranks Ohio 18th in the country for most imbalanced tax systems. In a “regressive” tax system, low- and middle-income people pay a larger balance of their incomes in state and local taxes than high earners. The study finds very few states with “progressive” tax […]
Los Angeles Times: Is the Oil Crash About to Snuff out the Texas Miracle?
January 5, 2015
Questions about who has really benefited from Texas fiscal policies will be heard more often, and the answers will be ugly. As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy observes, Texas has one of the most regressive tax systems in the land: its poorest 20% pay about four times as much of their average income […]
International Business Times: Immigration Reform 2014: Economic Impact Of Obama Helping Immigrants Includes More Jobs, Tax Revenue
November 20, 2014
TEXAS Immigrants comprise 21 percent of Texas’ labor force, according to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau. If all illegal immigrants were removed from Texas, the state would lose $69.3 billion in economic activity, $30.8 billion in gross state product and roughly 403,174 jobs, according to a 2008 report by the Perryman Group. If illegal immigrants […]
Memphis Daily News: Why Are Tennesseans so Afraid of an Income Tax?
November 3, 2014
Six of the nine state states without a state income tax – Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Washington, Alaska and Nevada – have had higher than average annual unemployment rates over the last decade, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Five of the nine – Tennessee, Florida, New Hampshire, Alaska and Nevada – are […]
Read the Report in PDF Form The Census Bureau released data in September showing that the share of Americans living in poverty remains high. In 2013, the national poverty rate was 14.5 percent, a slight drop from last years’ rate of 15 percent and the first decline since 2006.1 However, the poverty rate remains 2.0 […]
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