Wisconsin
It’s No Secret—To Save State Budgets End Preferential Treatment of Capital Gains
• By Marco Guzman
In an updated policy brief, ITEP explores the flaws in state capital gains tax breaks and highlights how ending special tax breaks provides one of the simplest ways to raise additional revenue and increase equity in the tax system.
State Taxation of Capital Gains: The Folly of Tax Cuts & Case for Proactive Reforms
• By Marco Guzman
The federal tax system and every state treat income from capital gains more favorably than income from work. Preferential capital gains tax treatment includes exclusions and seldom-discussed provisions like deferral and stepped-up basis, as well as more direct tax subsidies for profits realized from local investments and, in some instances, from investments around the world. This policy brief explains state capital gains taxation, examines the flaws in state capital gains tax breaks, and proposes reform…
Webinar: What’s Tax Got to Do With It?
• By ITEP Staff
Tax justice is necessary to achieve racial, social and economic justice. We need race-forward tax policies that create opportunity for everyone, demand corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share and raise enough revenue to respond to compounding climate, health and economic crises. Tax justice is justice. Sen. Sherrod Brown, joined by Dorian Warren (Community […]
The Rich Are Weathering the Pandemic Just Fine: Tax Them
• By Carl Davis, ITEP Staff, Meg Wiehe
Reductions in critical state and local investments, including health care and education, would only exacerbate the economic crisis brought on by COVID-19 and worsen racial and income inequality for years to come. Higher taxes on top earners are among the best options for addressing pandemic-related state revenue shortfalls in the coming months.
Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
Lawmakers in many states have enacted “sales tax holidays” (16 states will hold them in 2020) to provide a temporary break on paying the tax on purchases of clothing, school supplies, and other items. These holidays may seem to lessen the regressive impacts of the sales tax, but their benefits are minimal while their downsides are significant—and amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy brief looks at sales tax holidays as a…
Urban Milwaukee: Labor Leaders Slam Trump for Betraying Working People
July 14, 2020
By Democratic Party of Wisconsin The tax law Trump pushed through was a boon for large corporations, including those in Wisconsin like Kimberly Clark, that used the handout to shutter their facilities, issue stock buybacks, and lay off workers instead of creating jobs and increasing wages. Read more
State Rundown 6/26: States Take Varying Fiscal Approaches While Awaiting Federal Action
• By ITEP Staff
State policymakers this week took a variety of approaches to their fiscal situations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Tennessee lawmakers chose to balance their budget through $1.5 billion in cuts to public services, but not before adding to those cuts by going forward with planned tax cuts. California legislators also passed a budget but relied on a number of temporary measures and delays to do so. Their counterparts in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island opted…
Intended Consequences: Deliberate Disinvestment Caused Florida’s Unemployment Disaster
• By Stephanie Clegg
Florida politicians deliberately rigged the unemployment system after the Great Recession to avoid raising taxes on businesses. Now, in a pandemic, some out-of-work residents are left waiting more than six weeks for unemployment benefits while more than 280,000 others have been inexplicably denied. What’s happening in Florida underscores deeper challenges with systems that should help those in need, but instead are designed to fail them.
State Rundown 4/15: Tax Day Delayed but Other Important Work Accelerated
• By ITEP Staff
April 15 is traditionally the day federal and state income taxes are due, but like so much else, Tax Day is on hold for the time being. Meanwhile the pandemic’s disastrous and uneven effects on communities and shared institutions are decidedly not suspended. But nor are the efforts of individuals, advocates, and policymakers to develop solutions to respond to the immediate crisis while also building better systems going forward. ITEP’s recommendations for state tax policy…
State Rundown 4/9: Pandemic’s Fiscal Effects Slowly Coming into Focus
• By ITEP Staff
The COVID-19 pandemic continued this week to wreak havoc on lives and communities around the world. The fiscal fallout of the virus in the states is growing as well, and beginning this week to come into sharper focus. This week’s Rundown brings together what we know of that slowly clarifying picture and how states are responding so far.
State Rundown 4/3: States Welcome Federal Aid, Seek Further Solutions
• By ITEP Staff
States and families got good news this week as Congress came together to pass major aid to help during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. But that bright spot came amid an onslaught of very difficult news about the public health crisis and the economic and fiscal fallout accompanying it. This week’s Rundown brings you the latest on these developments and state and local responses to them.
State Rundown 3/4: Sun Shining on Progressive Tax Efforts This Week
• By ITEP Staff
Wisconsin’s expansion of a capital gains tax break for high-income households represents a dark spot on this week’s state fiscal news, and the growing threat of COVID-19 is casting an ominous shadow over all of it, but otherwise the picture is pleasantly sunny, featuring small steps forward for sound, progressive tax policy. An initiative to create a graduated income tax in Illinois, for example, got a vote of confidence from a major ratings agency, while…
State Rundown 2/27: Leaps Forward Needed for Tax Justice
• By ITEP Staff
This weekend’s Leap Day should be a welcome extra day for state lawmakers, advocates, and observers who care about tax and budget policy, as there is an overflow of proposals and information to digest. Most importantly, as emphasized in our “What We’re Reading” section, there are never enough days in a month to do justice to the importance of Black History Month and Black Futures Month. In state-specific debates, Oregon and Washington leaders are hoping…
State Rundown 2/20: Property Taxes and School Finance Take Center Stage
• By ITEP Staff
Property taxes and education funding are a major focus in state fiscal debates this week. California voters will soon vote on borrowing billions of dollars to fill just part of the funding hole created in large part by 1978’s anti-property-tax Proposition 13. Nebraska lawmakers are debating major school finance changes that some fear will create similar long-term fiscal issues. And Idaho and South Dakota leaders are looking to avoid that fate by reducing property taxes…
State Rundown 2/13: What’s Trendy in State Tax Debates This Year
• By ITEP Staff
We wrote earlier this week about Trends We’re Watching in 2020, and this week’s Rundown includes news on several of those trends. Maine lawmakers are considering a refundable credit for caregivers. Efforts to tax high-income households made news in Maryland, Oregon, and Washington. Grocery taxes are receiving scrutiny in Alabama, Idaho, and Tennessee. Tax cuts or shifts are being discussed in Arizona, Nebraska, and West Virginia. And Arizona, Maryland, and Nevada continue to seek funding…
ITEP Testimony In Support of H.B. 222 Income Tax Rates – Capital Gains Income & H.B. 256 Maryland Estate Tax – Unified Credit
• By Kamolika Das
Read as PDF Testimony of Kamolika Das, State Policy Analyst, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Submitted to: Ways and Means Committee, Maryland General Assembly Thank you for this opportunity to submit testimony. My name is Kamolika Das, and I represent the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that […]
Trends We’re Watching in 2020
• By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers have plenty to keep them busy on the tax policy front in 2020. Encouraging trends we’re watching this year include opportunities to enact and enhance refundable tax credits and increase the tax contributions of high-income households, each of which would improve tax equity and help to reduce income inequality.
State Itemized Deductions: Surveying the Landscape, Exploring Reforms
• By Carl Davis
State itemized deductions are generally patterned after federal law, though nearly every state makes significant changes to the menu of deductions available or the extent to which those deductions are allowed. This report summarizes the key details of each state’s itemized deduction policies and discusses various options for reforming those deductions with a focus on lessening their regressive impact and reducing their cost to state budgets.
State Rundown 1/30: Flip-Flops and Steady Marches in State Tax Debates
• By ITEP Staff
State tax and budget debates can turn on a dime sometimes, as in Utah this past week, where lawmakers unanimously repealed a tax package they had just approved in a special session last month. Delaware lawmakers are hoping to avoid the similarly abrupt end to their last effort to improve their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by crafting a bill that Gov. John Carney will have no reason to unexpectedly veto as he did two years ago. But at other times, these debates just can’t change fast…
State Rundown 1/22: “Only Light Can Do That”
• By ITEP Staff
This week as Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s messages of resisting oppression and fighting for progress, state policymakers can look to some bright spots where tax and budget debates are bending toward justice. Among those highlights, Hawaii leaders are considering improvements to minimum wage policy, early childhood education, and affordable housing; Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is seeking to reduce sales taxes applied to food and restore the state’s grocery tax credit; and advocates in…
State Rundown 1/15: State Tax Proposals Are All Over the Map
• By ITEP Staff
State tax and budget debates have arrived in a big way, with proposals from every part of the country and everywhere on the spectrum from good to bad tax policy. Just look to ARIZONA for a microcosm of nationwide debates, where education advocates have a plan to raise progressive taxes for school needs, Gov. Doug […]
State Rundown 1/8: States Need Clear Tax and Budget Policy Vision in 2020
• By ITEP Staff
Happy New Year readers! The Rundown is back to our usual weekly schedule as state legislative sessions and governors’ budgets and State of the State Addresses begin in earnest. Here’s to clear-eyed 20-20 vision guiding state tax and budget decisions in 2020! So far this year, the harm of Colorado’s TABOR policy and Alaska’s lack of an income tax are coming into focus in big ways. Utah advocates are hoping the benefit of hindsight will…
Amy Hanauer
• By ITEP Staff
Amy Hanauer provides vision and leadership to bring accurate research and data to tax policy conversations. As Director, Amy raises resources, guides strategy, and works with the board and staff to make ITEP a critical part of the policy discussion around a stronger tax code. She brings nearly 30 years of experience working to create economic policy that advances social justice.
State Rundown 12/18: Utah’s Tax Fight Wraps Up As Other States’ Ramp Up
• By ITEP Staff
With the new year and many state legislative sessions just around the corner, most state tax and budget debates are just getting started. Arkansas will be among the states working to improve their roads and other infrastructure. Massachusetts will have to deal with revenue losses due to a misguided tax-cut trigger put in place in prior years. Maryland and South Dakota will be two of many states facing teacher pay shortages and other education funding…
A Lump of Coal for 12 States Not Collecting Marketplace Sales Taxes this Holiday Season
• By Carl Davis
The last few years have brought major improvements in how states enforce their sales tax laws on purchases made over the Internet. Less than a decade ago, e-retailers almost never collected the sales taxes owed by their customers. The result was a multi-billion dollar drain on state coffers and a competitive disadvantage for local businesses. But this holiday season looks a bit different.
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