Trump-GOP Tax Law
There Is No Evidence That the New Tax Law Is Growing Our Economy or Creating Jobs
May 15, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Wednesday. Proponents of the law likely will use the occasion to tout its alleged economic benefits and argue that its temporary provisions should be made permanent. The title of the hearing is “Growing Our Economy and Creating Jobs,” but there is little evidence that the law does either of these things.
No Work Requirements for the Richest 1 Percent — Most of Their Tax Cuts Are for Unearned Income
May 10, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
The Trump Administration is pushing to add or strengthen work requirements for programs that benefit low- and middle-income people but holds a different view when it comes to the wealthy. Most tax cuts enjoyed by the richest 1 percent of households under the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Job Act (TCJA) are tax cuts for unearned income.
Apple’s Three-Month Tax Savings under President Trump’s New Tax Law: $1.68 Billion
May 2, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
By now, it should come as no shock that profitable Fortune 500 corporations are reaping huge benefits from the corporate tax cuts enacted last December. But as first quarter earnings reports are released, we’re learning just how big.
Trump Administration’s Spending Priorities Echo Tax Cut Priorities: Punish the Poor and Lavish the Rich
April 27, 2018 • By ITEP Staff, Jenice Robinson, Misha Hill
In 2017, the Trump Administration released a budget proposal filled with loaded language about “welfare reform” and moving able-bodied people from welfare to work. This narrative is designed to perpetuate the pernicious idea that poor people have personal shortcomings and are taking something that rightly belongs to others.
Congressional Budget Office: New Tax Law Helps Foreign Investors Even More than You Thought
April 19, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
President Trump and his allies in Congress have made many wild claims about economic growth that would result from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And the Congressional Budget Office just released a report revealing the TCJA will, in fact, create economic growth — for foreign investors.
10 Things You Should Know about the Nation’s Tax System
April 13, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Everyone pays taxes, including those who earn the least. Our collective federal, state, and local tax system includes income taxes, payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare), property taxes, sales and other excise taxes. The total share of taxes (federal, state, and local) that Americans across the economic spectrum will pay in 2018 is roughly equal to their total share of income.
New ITEP Report: Extension of the Temporary TCJA Provisions Would Be Just as Regressive as TCJA Itself
April 10, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
A new ITEP report estimates the impacts in every state of the much-discussed idea of extending the temporary provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which will expire after 2025 without further action from Congress. The report concludes that extending or making permanent these provisions would be just as skewed to the wealthy as the original law.
Same Old Same: 50-State Analysis Finds Extending the New Tax Law’s Temporary Provisions Would Mainly Benefit the Wealthy
April 10, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
While rhetoric may bill this tax law and proposed extension as a middle-class tax cut, the data tell the real story: the Trump-GOP tax law was and remains a giveaway to corporations and the wealthy.
Extensions of the New Tax Law’s Temporary Provisions Would Mainly Benefit the Wealthy
April 10, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
This analysis finds that extending the temporary tax provisions in 2026 would not be aimed at helping the middle-class any more than TCJA as enacted helps the middle-class in 2018.
Is the Trump Organization’s Sales Tax Avoidance More Aggressive Than Amazon’s?
April 6, 2018 • By Carl Davis
In recent weeks, President Trump has been raking Amazon over the coals for failing to collect state and local sales taxes on many of the company’s sales—a criticism that has some merit. But a new story first reported by James Kosur at RedStateDisaster, and then picked up today by the Wall Street Journal, provides fascinating insight into the sales tax collection habits of the Trump Organization’s “official retail website,” TrumpStore.com.
How Much Will Typical Middle-Class Workers Really See Their Paychecks Change?
February 3, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
The campaign by Republican leaders in Congress to promote their new tax law has two prongs. One is the claim that corporate income tax cuts are already trickling down to workers, which, as we have explained, is believed by basically no economists anywhere. The other prong of their campaign is to argue that the personal income tax cuts will provide a noticeable decline in withholding from paychecks that middle-class people will notice soon. At this point, it’s helpful to look at some actual data and see how small the boost in take-home pay will really be for most Americans.
How Exxon’s Empty $50 Billion Promise Made Its Way into Trump’s SOTU
January 31, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
Never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, House Speaker Paul Ryan immediately published a press release with the headline, “ExxonMobil to Invest an Additional $50 Billion in the U.S. Due to Tax Reform.” The statement was completely faithful to ExxonMobil’s statement, except for the words “additional” and “due to tax reform.” Not to be outdone, President Trump implied during his State of the Union address that the company was investing $50 billion in response to the new tax law. But a closer examination of ExxonMobil’s recent history of domestic spending finds that the…
Fact-Checking Trump’s State of the Union Address on Tax Issues
January 31, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
Here are some claims the President made during his State of the Union address, along with the facts.
Moody’s and Conservative Economists Agree: The Trump Corporate Tax Cut Is Not Helping Workers
January 26, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
Moody’s does not believe that corporate tax cuts are trickling down to working people as bonuses and pay raises. The real problem with the corporate PR campaign is that even those economists who supported Trump’s corporate tax cut and claimed it would help workers do not believe that it works this way.
Federal Tax Law Will Have Mixed Effect on Taxpayers’ State Tax Bills and States’ Revenue
January 26, 2018 • By Meg Wiehe
Most states piggyback on federal law to some extent for their own taxes, especially personal and corporate income taxes. These states in particular must understand what the federal changes mean for their own tax codes and decide whether to remain “coupled” to changes in the tax bill, decouple from them or take other action in response.
IRS Can and Should Block “Charitable Contribution” Schemes
January 25, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
States’ attempts to work around the new federal tax law and ensure their residents continue to maximally benefit from state and local tax (SALT) deductions have been in the news since the beginning of the year. At a panel discussion for tax professionals in Washington Thursday, Thomas West, tax legislative counsel at the Treasury Department, cast doubt on proposed work-around schemes that would convert state income tax payments into “charitable contributions.”
It’s a Small Bonus After All
January 24, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
The Walt Disney Corporation announced this week that in the wake of the new tax bill’s passage, it will spend $125 million on one-time bonuses and $50 million on an education program for some employees, all in 2018. This $175 million spending commitment is notable for two reasons: it’s temporary, and it’s a drop in the bucket for a company that’s likely to see annual tax savings of $1.2 billion a year and has already committed to a $50 billion-plus corporate acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s assets.
Apple Gambled on Congressional Spinelessness on Tax Policy— and Won
January 18, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
Now, Apple Inc. would like the American public to know that it has “a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country” a small fraction of its multi-billion-dollar tax cut haul. However, the company’s splashy press release is devoid of any specifics on the jobs it will create as a result of the tax bill. Like other corporate announcements, the company’s recent proclamation of newfound patriotism should be viewed as a public relations ploy designed to convince a skeptical public that working families will see some trickle-down benefit from this historic corporate giveaway.
Repealing, or Working Around, the Cap on State and Local Tax Deductions Would Make the Trump-GOP Tax Law Even More Unfair
January 17, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
A bipartisan proposal in Congress to eliminate the new $10,000 cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) would cost more than $86 billion in 2019 alone and two-thirds of the benefits would go to the richest 1 percent of households. Unfortunately, “work around” proposals in some states to allow their residents to avoid the new federal cap would likely have the same regressive effect on the overall tax code.
The Walmart Smiley Face Is Lying: Corporate Tax Cuts Are Not Causing Pay Raises and Bonuses
January 12, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
Last night, Yahoo reported that 81 corporations had announced pay raises and bonuses that they claim result from the Trump-GOP tax law’s reduction in the official corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Of these 81 corporations, 13 were included in ITEP’s most recent corporate tax study, which focuses on the Fortune 500 companies that were profitable every year from 2008 through 2015. These 13 companies had a combined effective tax rate of just 19.1 percent, which undermines the idea that the federal corporate tax rate was holding back their ability to pay workers.
New Tax Law Allows Affluent Taxpayers to Write off K-12 Private School Tuition
January 9, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
Taxpayers are still learning about the intended and unintended consequences of the major tax overhaul that Republican leaders ramrodded through late last year. One little-noted provision subverts state laws that prohibit the use of public dollars for private schools by allowing taxpayers to use 529 plans to pay for K-12 tuition. Until last year, the […]
Final Tax Bill Hits Parents of College Students Harder than Other Taxpayers
December 19, 2017 • By Steve Wamhoff
While many provisions targeting higher education in previous versions of the tax plan were eventually dropped, little thought has been given to how the bill still raises taxes on parents at the time they are trying to pay for college tuition.
Corker Claims Provisions Benefiting Him Could Not Have Changed His Vote Because He Never Read the Bill
December 18, 2017 • By Matthew Gardner
Many Republicans who had previously claimed to be deficit hawks have been cheerfully supportive of major tax-cutting legislation as it has moved forward this fall. But one Republican Senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee, has taken a defiant stance on the issue, insisting that “passing off increased debt to future generations” would be a deal-breaker for him. When the Senate passed its version of the tax plan last week, Corker was the only Republican to vote No.
GOP Leaders Scrounge Up Money to Lower Top Tax Rate for the Rich But Not to Help Low-Income Working Families with Children
December 15, 2017 • By Meg Wiehe
Republican leaders who rejected a proposal to have corporations pay a single percentage point higher tax rate to benefit families with children have tapped the exact same source of savings to provide more breaks for the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. The table below compares the number and share of households nationally and in all 50-states who would benefit from the proposal to reduce taxes for working families with children versus the ”compromise” to cut the top individual tax rate -- below either the House or Senate version – to 37 percent for couples with incomes above $1 million.
ITEP Resources for the Tax Reform Debate
December 14, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
ITEP researchers have produced new reports and analyses that look at various pieces of the tax bill, including: the share of tax cuts that will go to foreign investors; how the plans would affect the number of taxpayers that take the mortgage interest deduction or write off charitable contributions, and remaining problems with the bill in spite of proposed compromises on state and local tax deductions.
