Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Trump-GOP Tax Law

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CNBC: How Senate GOP ‘No Tax on Tips’ Proposal Differs From House Republican Plan

June 18, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner

However, the Senate proposal is different from the House version in two key ways, Matt Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote in an e-mail. Read more.

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Musk-Trump Feud Shows Need to Tax the Rich

June 6, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer

Our tax policies enable people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump to accumulate more wealth than anyone could ever use in a lifetime. They then use it to steer elections and shape public policy to further enrich themselves and others like them. We should defeat the enormously destructive tax bill in Congress and instead craft tax policy that taxes the rich, makes our democracy more fair, and returns resources to the rest of the country.

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Analysis of Tax Provisions in the House Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

May 22, 2025 • By Carl Davis, Jessica Vela, Joe Hughes, Steve Wamhoff

The poorest fifth of Americans would receive 1 percent of the House reconciliation bill's net tax cuts in 2026 while the richest fifth of Americans would receive two-thirds of the tax cuts. The richest 5 percent alone would receive a little less than half of the net tax cuts that year.

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House Tax Bill Would Encourage Dynastic Wealth Hoarding by Further Weakening the Estate Tax

May 15, 2025 • By Jon Whiten

The sprawling tax and spending bill before the House of Representatives would cut more than $200 billion from food assistance, potentially affecting 4 million children and 7 million adults, while providing an estate tax cut costing roughly the same amount to a few thousand people who will leave behind more than $7 million to their heirs.

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Federal Tax Debate 2025

May 2, 2025 • By .ITEP Staff

The tax cuts in the House bill mostly flow to those who have the most. Roughly 68% of the tax cuts go to the richest 20% in the U.S. Some other notable changes would support private school voucher programs, harm immigrant communities, and widen income and racial inequality.

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The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs

April 23, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

The tariffs proposed by Donald Trump, which are far larger than any on the books today, would significantly raise the prices faced by American consumers across the income scale.

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It’s Tax Day. You’ve Paid Your Share, but the Billionaires Haven’t.

April 15, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer

You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now.

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Senate Republicans Rig Congressional Rules to Make Their Tax Cuts Appear Cost-Free

April 4, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff

This week, members of Congress are arguing about whether extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts would cost trillions of dollars over a decade or cost nothing.

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Trump’s Address to Congress Obscures His Actual Tax Agenda

March 5, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer

In last night’s address to Congress, President Trump spent more time insulting Americans, lying, and bragging than he did talking about taxes. But regardless of what President Trump and Elon Musk talk about most loudly and angrily, there is one clear policy that they and the corporations and billionaires that support them will try hardest […]

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House Budget Resolution Tees Up Damaging Trump Tax Agenda

February 26, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff

The budget resolution passed by House Republicans will enrich the richest, blow up the deficit, and decimate vital public services. The budget resolution allows Congress to pass reconciliation legislation with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that would mostly flow to the wealthiest families in the country. Congressional Republicans have no way to pay for the massive tax cuts promised by President Trump during his campaign other than to dismantle fundamental parts of the government and increase the federal budget deficit.

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The Five Biggest Corporations Represented at Trump’s Inauguration Could Save $75 Billion from One Tax Break Before Congress

February 11, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini

New financial reports indicate five of America’s biggest corporations—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla—could win $75 billion in tax breaks if Congress and the President satisfy demands from corporate lobbyists to reinstate a provision repealed under the 2017 Trump tax law.

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Congress Could — But Won’t — Pass a Tax Package That Pays for Itself

January 17, 2025 • By Joe Hughes

If Republican lawmakers were serious about deficit-neutral tax reform, they would focus on increasing taxes for the ultra-wealthy and large corporations. The absence of such proposals in their plan reveals their true priority: delivering enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while average working families receive crumbs.

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Trump’s Plan to Extend His 2017 Tax Provisions: Updated National and State-by-State Estimates

January 8, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff

Trump’s plan to make most of the temporary provisions of his 2017 tax law permanent would disproportionately benefit the richest Americans. This includes all major provisions except the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) paid.

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A Distributional Analysis of Kamala Harris’ Tax Plan

October 23, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff

The tax proposals from Vice President Kamala Harris would, on average, lead to a tax increase for the richest 1 percent of Americans and a tax cut for all other income groups.

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A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan

October 7, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Erika Frankel, Galen Hendricks, Joe Hughes, Matthew Gardner, Michael Ettlinger, Steve Wamhoff

Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.

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Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: Updated National and State-by-State Estimates

September 13, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff

The TCJA Permanency Act would make permanent the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that are set to expire at the end of 2025. The legislation would disproportionately benefit the richest Americans. Below are graphics for each state that show the effects of making TCJA permanent across income groups. See ITEP’s […]

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The Quiet Effort to Make Single Parenthood More Expensive

September 9, 2024 • By Carl Davis

After the dust settles on this year’s election, one of the most pressing issues confronting the next Congress and President will be how to deal with the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts and, more specifically, who will pay for the cost of extending some or all of those cuts. Among the more widely accepted ideas circulating on the right is to raise income taxes on single parents, more than four in five of whom are women and a disproportionate share of whom are people of color.

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Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law

May 2, 2024 • By Matthew Gardner, Michael Ettlinger, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff

The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018.

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Biden Is Right: Corporate Tax Avoidance Has Big Problems That We Can Fix

April 1, 2024 • By Jon Whiten

Sensible reforms to the corporate tax system can help both crack down on corporate tax avoidance and ensure companies that are flourishing are paying their share for the public infrastructure that forms the building blocks of their success.

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Revenue-Raising Proposals in President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan

March 12, 2024 • By Steve Wamhoff

President Biden’s most recent budget plan includes proposals that would raise more than $5 trillion from high-income individuals and corporations over a decade. Like the budget plan he submitted to Congress last year, it would partly reverse the Trump tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals, clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, and require the wealthiest individuals to pay taxes on their capital gains income just as they are required to for other types of income, among other reforms.

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Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law

February 29, 2024 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff

The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.

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The House’s Debt Ceiling Smoke Screen: The GOP Budget Plan Gives Cover for Tax Cuts for the Rich

May 9, 2023 • By Joe Hughes

While it isn’t reasonable in the first place for Congress to debate whether it will pay the bills it has already incurred, some of the same lawmakers who are holding the economy hostage to exact budget cuts have decided to make the conversation even more irrational by proposing to increase deficits with tax cuts that enrich the already rich.

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Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: National and State-by-State Estimates

May 4, 2023 • By Joe Hughes, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff

The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.

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Reversing the Stricter Limit on Interest Deductions: Another Huge Tax Break for Private Equity 

December 6, 2022 • By Steve Wamhoff

Private equity is doing fine on its own and does not need another tax break. Congress should keep the stricter limit on deductions for interest payments —one of the few provisions in the 2017 tax law that asked large businesses to pay a little bit more.

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Corporate Tax Avoidance Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

July 29, 2021 • By .ITEP Staff, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff

Thirty-nine profitable corporations in the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax from 2018 through 2020, the first three years that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was in effect. Besides the 39 companies that paid nothing over three years, an additional 73 profitable corporations paid less than half the statutory corporate income tax rate of 21 percent established under TCJA. As a group, these 73 corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 5.3 percent during these three years.