Tennessee
A new study released today provides the best evidence yet that progressive state income taxes are not leading to any meaningful amount of “tax flight” among top earners.
Knoxville News: Hall tax reduction signed into law by Gov. Haslam
May 23, 2016
“The governor’s office did not issue a comment on his action. But the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which analyzes tax policy from a progressive standpoint, says repealing the Hall income tax will make Tennessee’s tax system more regressive than it already is because it will benefit the wealthiest taxpayers the most while the […]
Chattanooga Times Free Press: New bill eliminates tax on investment earnings
May 23, 2016
“Dylan Grundman, senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, called elimination a “major step backward for tax fairness in Tennessee, not to mention a brazen giveaway to the wealthiest Tennesseans.” Read more
WBIR Tennessee: Gov. Bill Haslam signs Hall income tax cut, repeal into law
May 23, 2016
“The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which analyzes tax policy from a progressive standpoint, says repealing the Hall income tax will make Tennessee’s tax system more regressive than it already is because it will benefit the wealthiest taxpayers the most while the majority of Tennesseans will see no benefit at all.” Read more
The Daily Herald: New law eliminates investment tax
May 23, 2016
“Dylan Grundman, senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, called elimination a “major step backward for tax fairness in Tennessee, not to mention a brazen giveaway to the wealthiest Tennesseans. “Already, Tennessee’s lack of a broad-based income tax and comparatively high sales tax make the state’s tax system one of the most […]
Memphis Daily News: Haves, Have-Nots Get Varied Tax Relief
May 12, 2016
“Most Tennesseans, however, won’t see much, if any, benefit from the Hall tax phase-out, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which contends sales taxes are unfair. The state’s wealthiest 1 percent, making an average of $1.2 million, would receive tax cuts of about $870 the first year. Households in the bottom 95 […]
Knoxville News Sentinel: Who got the gold mine, and the shaft
May 9, 2016
“Legislators claim the break is designed for seniors and retirement savings, but the vast majority of seniors — indeed, the vast majority of all Tennesseans — fall well below the threshold where the Hall tax starts, or receive funds wholly exempt from it. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy crunched the actual numbers and […]
Times Free Press: Chattanooga to lose roughly $5 million annually after state lawmakers repeal Hall Income Tax
April 25, 2016
“Carl Davis, senior policy analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Tax Policy, said in a statement, “The vast majority of Tennessee residents will not receive a tax cut under this bill. This is a tax cut on investment income, which mostly benefits those few families with large amounts of wealth.”” Read more
Knoxville News Sentinel: Looking back at 2016’s busy legislative session in Tenn.
April 25, 2016
“The progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says the reduction and repeal would make Tennessee’s tax system more regressive, with most Tennesseans getting little or no benefit. Meanwhile, Tennessee remains one of a dozen states still taxing food.” Read more
Brentwood Home Page: Brentwood decreasing dependence on Hall Tax revenue as legislators debate elimination
April 22, 2016
“According to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the vast majority of Tennesseans would see little to no benefit from a repeal of the Hall Tax between now and 2021. ITEP is a nonprofit, non-partisan research organization that works on federal, state and local tax policy issues. According to their study, […]
The Tennessean: Senate approves bill reducing Hall tax to 5 percent
April 20, 2016
“While several Republicans reveled in the effort to cut the tax, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy criticized their efforts, saying the majority of Tennesseans will see no financial benefits. “The Hall Tax plays an important role in offsetting the otherwise regressive impact of Tennessee’s tax system,” Dylan Grundman, a senior analyst at the […]
Distributional Analyses of Revenue Options for Alaska
April 13, 2016 • By Aidan Davis, Carl Davis
Alaskans are faced with a stark fiscal reality. Following the discovery of oil in the 1960s and 1970s, state lawmakers repealed their personal income tax and began funding government primarily through oil tax and royalty revenues. For decades, oil revenues filled roughly 90 percent of the state's general fund.
Tennessee Hall Tax Repeal Would Overwhelmingly Benefit the Wealthy, Raise Tennesseans’ Federal Tax Bills by $85 Million
February 23, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
Read PDF of report. Tennessee lawmakers are giving serious consideration to repealing their state’s “Hall Tax” on investment income (so named for the state senator who sponsored the legislation creating the tax more than eighty years ago). But the Hall Tax is an important revenue source for both state and local governments, and is a […]
Tulsa World: Julie DelCour: Measuring Up: ‘DOTs’ hope for a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment
February 22, 2016
“Last year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported that 20 states have gone a decade or more without an increase in their gasoline tax rate; 15 states had gone two decades or more. And five states, including Oklahoma, had not seen an increase in their gasoline tax rate since the 1980s or earlier. […]
Many states' transportation budgets are in disarray, in part because they are trying to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with a gasoline tax rate that is rarely increased. A growing number of states have recognized the problem with this approach and have switched to a "variable-rate" gas tax under which the tax rate tends to rise over time alongside either inflation or gas prices. A majority of Americans live in a state where the gas tax is automatically adjusted in this way.
Nashville Business Journal: Report: Tennessee’s tax code is kind to the 1 percent
September 23, 2015
The results of that survey suggest Americans think a tax system is fair when higher-income households pay a greater percentage of their income than lower-income households (or in shorthand, a progressive tax system). WalletHub then compared the tax systems in the 50 states with these results, using estimates from the Institute on Taxation and […]
WUNC: Under New Tax Plan, Timing Belt Change Would Cost $30 More On This Volkswagen Jetta
September 18, 2015
“Sen. Josh Stein, a Democrat from Wake County, disagrees. He says the plan would favor high-wage earners because everyone pays the same income tax—instead of lower rates for people who make less money, as was the case in previous North Carolina tax models—and new consumer service taxes take up a bigger proportion of the […]
Low Tax for Whom?: Tennessee is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
September 17, 2015 • By Meg Wiehe
Annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau appear to lend support to Tennessee's reputation as a "low tax state," ranking it 50th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state's overall tax revenues has led many observers to overlook the fact that different taxpayers experience Tennessee's tax system very differently. In particular, the poorest 20 percent of Tennessee residents pay significantly more of their income (10.9 percent) in state and local taxes than any other group in the state. For low-income families, Tennessee is far from being a low tax state.2 In fact,…
Bloomberg BNA: Individual Income Tax Insights: Fifty States of Rates – State Tax Systems Don’t Play Fair
September 15, 2015
“All state tax systems are inherently unfair, at least that is the verdict issued by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). ITEP’s 2015 Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States report analyzed state and local tax systems to assess the fairness with which each system is designed […]
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 […]
Huffington Post: How Some States Are Trying To Fix Their Crumbling Infrastructure
July 6, 2015
Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said efforts to raise state taxes to pay for roads and bridges exploded this year. In 2013 and 2014, four states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming) increased their gas taxes, while Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island indexed the gas tax to either […]
Chatanooga Free Press: Tennessee Ranked as Top State for High-Income Earners
March 25, 2015
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s latest report, many taxes, such as payroll, sales, and some state and local taxes, are regressive. That means that they take more money from lower and middle income brackets than from wealthier families, WalletHub reported. Read more
The Memphis Daily News: Eliminating Hall Income Tax Raises New Problems
March 4, 2015
While Tennessee depends primarily on sales taxes for state revenue, the Hall tax was projected to bring $260 million into state coffers in fiscal 2014, about $98 million of which would go back to the local governments where those taxpayers live. That revenue would disappear, and 63 percent of the tax cuts would go to […]
NPR All Things Considered: Failing Bridges Take a Toll
February 11, 2015
“Asphalt costs are higher, machinery costs are higher. Construction workers’ wages are usually higher,” says Carl Davis of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. “So the revenues that we’re chipping in aren’t keeping pace with the costs that we have.” Davis says the federal government can borrow money to fund transportation projects. […]
An updated version of this report has been published with data through July 1, 2017. Read the report in PDF form. Many states’ transportation budgets are in disarray, in part because they are trying to cover the rising cost of asphalt, machinery, and other construction materials with a gasoline tax rate that is rarely increased.1 […]
