Tennessee
Times Free Press: Chattanooga to lose roughly $5 million annually after state lawmakers repeal Hall Income Tax
April 25, 2016 • By ITEP Staff
“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 • By ITEP Staff
“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 • By ITEP Staff
“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 • By ITEP Staff
“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 […]
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 […]
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,…
Cheat Sheet: 10 Worst States in America for Fair Tax Systems
July 13, 2015 • By ITEP Staff
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 • By ITEP Staff
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 […]
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury: Tennessee Transportation Funding
January 20, 2015 • By ITEP Staff
This report is in response to a 2014 request from the Fiscal Review Committee of the Tennessee General Assembly. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of Tennessee’s current financing system for highways and bridges, outline challenges to the existing system, and review alternative funding methods. The report is intended to provide […]
Chattanooga Times Free Press: She Still Struggles But Now She Has Hope
January 20, 2015 • By ITEP Staff
Georgia and Tennessee are not among the 29 states to pass legislation boosting the minimum wage above the federal rate of $7.25 per hour. A report released last week by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Tennessee’s tax rates are among the top 10 most regressive in the nation, meaning the poor […]
Nashville Scene:The State GOP Takes Aim at the Hall Tax
December 12, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
According to a study by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, nearly two-thirds of this tax cut would flow to the wealthiest 5 percent of the state’s taxpayers. Taxpayers over age 65 who earn less than $59,000 a year in total income already are exempt from the tax. The vast majority of Tennesseans […]
The Times Free Press: A Taxing Question
November 17, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal-leaning think tank, last spring estimated that if the Hall tax were eliminated, Tennessee’s wealthiest residents with annual incomes of $970,000 would receive “a whopping 63 percent of the benefits of the tax cut.” Another 23 percent would end up in federal coffers because those who paid […]
Memphis Daily News: Why Are Tennesseans so Afraid of an Income Tax?
November 3, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
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 […]
Knoxville News Sentinel: Moves to Repeal Hall Income Tax Begin
September 22, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy did an analysis earlier this year that found wealthy residents — income averaging $970,000 per year — would receive “a whopping 63 percent of the benefits” from repeal of the Hall while another 23 percent “would go to the federal government because residents who pay the tax would […]
The Motley Fool: The 5 States with the Highest Sales Tax
August 20, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
By Jeremy Bowman: Nearly every state in the union charges a sales tax, and the tax levied on goods and services sold at the retail level is just one of many tools states use to collect revenue, along with licensing and taxes on income, corporations, and property. Sales taxes tend to attract less attention than […]
WZTV: Facebook Gets Refund Without Paying Taxes
July 9, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
“The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports these large companies like Facebook pay their executives in stock options instead of cash which doesn’t cost the company a dime yet they can write it off as an expense. So Facebook profited more than a billion dollars in 2012 and since they’re not paying, it could […]
The Tennessean: Hall tax cut gets new push
April 8, 2014 • By ITEP Staff
(Original Post) 5:07 p.m. CDT April 7, 2014 Tennessee lawmakers are seriously considering a new proposal to roll back the state’s tax on investments, even as they wrestle with a growing hole in the state budget. More than 90 legislators have signed onto a pledge from a prominent anti-tax organization to support a measure that […]
Tennessee Hall Tax Repeal Would Overwhelmingly Benefit the Wealthy, Raise Tennesseans’ Federal Tax Bills by $60 Million
March 24, 2014 • By Carl Davis
A new analysis performed using the ITEP Microsimulation Tax Model shows that the vast majority of Tennesseans would see very little benefit from Hall Tax repeal. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the tax cuts would flow to the wealthiest 5 percent of Tennessee taxpayers, while another quarter (23 percent) would actually end up in the federal government's coffers. Moreover, if localities respond to Hall Tax repeal by raising property taxes, some Tennesseans could actually face higher tax bills under this proposal.
Tennessee is a “Low Tax State” Overall, But Not for Families Living in Poverty
September 19, 2013 • By Meg Wiehe
Read the Report in PDF Form See all “Low Tax for Who?” states New data from the Census Bureau appear to lend support to Tennessee’s reputation as a “low tax state,” ranking it 49th nationally in taxes collected as a share of personal income.1 But focusing on the state’s overall tax revenues has led many […]
Bristol Herald Courier: Non-wealthy Tennessee families face high tax burdens, report says
February 7, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
(Original Post) Posted: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 12:02 pm | Updated: 2:27 pm, Wed Feb 6, 2013. BRISTOL HERALD COURIER Posted on February 6, 2013 by Roger Brown BRISTOL, Tenn. – Poor and middle-class families in Tennessee spend nearly 12 percent and 9 percent, respectively, of their total income on taxes, according to a new […]
The Paris Post-Intelligencer: The poor paying more, study of taxes declares
January 31, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
(Original Post) Published: Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:29 AM CSTIt’s hardly new information, but it bears repeating from time to time to make sure we don’t forget: Tennessee’s tax system punishes the poor. When taxes are calculated as a percentage of income, low-income families in this state pay four times as much as the very […]
Knox News: TN Taxes Hardest on Middle and Low-income Families
January 31, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
Nashville, Tennessee – Like most state tax systems, Tennessee takes a much larger share from middle- and low-income families than from wealthy families, according to the fourth edition of Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, released today by the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and […]
The Tennessean: New study calls Tennessee’s tax system ‘unfair’
January 31, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
Written by Bobby Allyn The Tennessean Tennessee is often championed as a low-tax state. But for struggling families, it might not be among the fairest. As a percentage of income, state and local governments tax low-income families four times as much as the very wealthy, according to a report released on Wednesday by a pro-income […]
Nashville Scene: We’re No. 6 in Unfair Taxes
January 30, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
(Original Post) Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:54 PM Tennessee might rank near the bottom nationally in education spending, per capita income and nearly every other quality-of-life category ever devised. But we remain near the top in one measure. Our tax system is really great at sticking it to the […]
Tennesseans for Fair Taxation: Tax Modernization & Economic Stimulus Act
January 15, 2013 • By ITEP Staff
This plan will provide much needed tax breaks to 60% of Tennesseans, those low- and middle-income families most likely to put that money back into the local economy. For example: -A family of four making $20,000 will save over $550 per year. -A family of four making $35,000 will save over $700 per year. […]
