Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

Cross Cutting Research

Sarah Austin

February 24, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

Sarah Austin

Sarah is a Senior Analyst at ITEP. She focuses her research on progressive revenue-raising options for states. Before joining ITEP in 2025, Sarah served as senior policy advisor to the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. Prior to that, she served as the research and policy director at the Maine Center for Economic Policy […]

Nick Johnson

January 15, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

Nick Johnson

Nick serves as a Senior Fellow with ITEP’s state and local policy teams. He brings three decades of expertise in state and local tax policy to advance economic justice and sustainable public finance. Most recently, he led the District of Columbia Tax Revision Commission as Executive Director, where he guided the independent, decennial commission’s comprehensive […]

Michael Ettlinger

February 12, 2023 • By ITEP Staff

Michael Ettlinger

Michael is a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. He is also a senior fellow with the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, where he was the founding director, and an independent author. This is Michael’s second tour at ITEP. He was previously the State Tax […]

Brakeyshia Samms

August 18, 2021 • By ITEP Staff

Brakeyshia Samms

Brakeyshia researches and writes about tax policies to inform the public and supports advocates and policymakers with analyses to help secure equitable tax policies, sound fiscal practices, and policy solutions that remedy historical injustices.

Matthew Gardner

April 21, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

Matthew Gardner

Matt is a senior fellow at ITEP where he has worked since 1998. He previously served as ITEP’s executive director from 2006 to 2016. Mr. Gardner’s work focuses on federal, state and local tax systems, with a particular emphasis on the impact of tax policies on low- and moderate-income tax payers. He uses ITEP’s microsimulation model to produce economic projections and analyses on the effects of current and proposed federal and state tax and budget policies.

Carl Davis

April 21, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

Carl Davis

Carl is the research director at ITEP, where he has worked since 2008. As ITEP’s research director, Carl is responsible for exploring new and emerging trends in tax policy. In this role, he has authored reports on proposals to legalize and tax cannabis sales, to implement vehicle-miles-traveled taxes, to update the tax treatment of the “gig economy,” and to improve the enforcement of sales taxes as they relate to online shopping. Carl has also conducted extensive research into private school tax credits. That research helped reveal the profitable tax shelters that these credits created for some upper-income donors to private…