Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

Trump Tax Policies

Live Nation Entertainment Says Trump Tax Law Drove its 2025 Federal Income Tax Bill to Zero

The company paid zero federal income tax in 2025 despite reporting $145 million of U.S. profits.

Trump Administration Provides Biggest Illegal Tax Cuts Yet for Billion-Dollar Corporations

The Treasury Department is unilaterally cutting corporate taxes with regulations that ignore the statute they claim to implement, disregarding the separation of powers between the branches of government that has defined how America works for more than two centuries.

Palantir Pays Zero Federal Income Tax Despite Explosive Growth, Largely Due to Trump Tax Law

Palantir reported $1.5 billion of U.S. income but paid exactly zero federal income tax in 2025. Despite explosive growth, tax breaks from the Trump tax law helped Palantir avoid paying even a dime of federal income tax on its earnings.

Trump Undermined the Constitution to Give Corporations a $10 Billion Tax Cut

This unilateral corporate tax cut from the Trump administration will cost $10 billion over a decade unless it is reversed.

What Did 2025 State Tax Changes Mean for Racial and Economic Equity?

The results are a mixed bag, with some states enacting promising policies that will improve tax equity and others going in the opposite direction.

Four Big Tech Companies Avoid $51 Billion in Taxes in Wake of One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Four of the corporations whose CEOs flanked President Trump at his 2025 inauguration ceremony have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

State Rundown 2/5: Icy Roads Do Not Slow Tax Policy Debates

Despite wintry conditions across much of the country, that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from debating major tax policy changes.

Meta’s Federal Tax Rate Hits an All-Time Low Due to Breaks Expanded by Trump Tax Law

The company paid an effective federal income tax rate of just over 3.5% in 2025, the lowest it has recorded since the company went public as Facebook in 2012.

An Anti-Affordability Agenda: Trump’s Advisors Call on States to Raise Taxes on the Working Class and Drastically Cut Taxes for the Rich

The Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisors suggests that states consider drastically raising sales taxes and using those new revenues to pay for repealing taxes on corporate and personal income. Working-class families would face dramatic tax increases while the nation’s wealthiest families would see their state tax bills plummet.

How the Wealthy Exploit the Tax Code: Q&A with Professor Ray Madoff, Author of ‘The Second Estate’

Her timely book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, walks readers through federal tax policy history and the modern-day legal maneuvers the wealthy use to pay little to no taxes

blog  

States Can Push Back Against Reckless Federal Tax Policy. Here’s How.

January 22, 2026 • By Aidan Davis, Wesley Tharpe

States Can Push Back Against Reckless Federal Tax Policy. Here’s How.

They should take steps to protect and boost their own revenues. And they should take a second look at their own tax cuts.

Local Governments Are Increasingly Strapped: 2026 Will Bring New Challenges and New Opportunities

2025 saw an intensification of state and local tax fights across the country, as well as growing experimentation with local-option taxes, levies, fees, and tourism taxes aimed at keeping budgets afloat while also navigating political constraints imposed by state legislatures.

Don’t Be Fooled by Treasury’s Jekyll and Hyde Approach to Tax Enforcement

While this guidance is sorely needed to clean up the mess created by a hasty Congress, these notices stand in sharp contrast to the deregulatory, anti-tax approach that the Treasury Department has taken.

blog  

2025: The Year in Tax Policy

December 23, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

2025: The Year in Tax Policy

From Congressional discussions over the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" to debates on property taxes, ITEP kept busy this year analyzing tax proposals and showing Americans across the country how tax decisions affect them.

blog  

‘Tax the Rich,’ Says … Mitt Romney?

December 22, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner

‘Tax the Rich,’ Says … Mitt Romney?

His 900-word New York Times op-ed identifies some sensible federal tax reform ideas that would create a fairer, more sustainable tax system.

10 Reasons Why the U.S. Should Reform Its Corporate Income Tax

The U.S. needs a tax code that is more progressive and that raises more revenue than the one we have now. An important way to achieve this is to reform the taxation of business profits. These four key policy reforms would greatly strengthen the corporate tax system: Eliminating or restricting special breaks and loopholes that […]

President Trump Says His Tariffs Aren’t Paid by Americans. Corporations Are Indicating the Opposite.

Corporations have publicly revealed that they are passing the cost of tariffs on to Americans—the opposite of what the executive branch has said is happening.

No, Scott Bessent: States Aren’t Taking Away Anyone’s Tax Cuts

It’s wildly inappropriate for a U.S. Treasury Secretary to lean on states to adopt or not adopt specific federal provisions in their own state tax codes.

Linking to Tipped and Overtime Income Deductions Would Worsen State Shortfalls, Do Little to Help Workers

State deductions for tips and overtime are not only ineffective at supporting working-class people, it will come at a substantial cost to state budgets.

Conforming to the ‘No Tax on Tips’ Gimmick Just Got Riskier and Costlier for States

An unknown number of workers who previously were assumed to be ineligible for the tax break may nonetheless claim it.

Re-Examining 529 Plans: Stopping State Subsidies to Private Schools After New Trump Tax Law

The 2025 federal tax law risks making 529 plans more costly for states by increasing tax avoidance and allowing wealthy families to use these funds for private and religious K-12 schools.

State Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Subsidize Federal Opportunity Zones

The Opportunity Zones program benefits wealthy investors more than it benefits disadvantaged communities.

blog  

Trump Raises the Price of Filing a Tax Return

November 5, 2025 • By Joe Hughes

Trump Raises the Price of Filing a Tax Return

The move was expected, given heavy lobbying from tax prep companies like Intuit and H&R Block to put a halt to the IRS’s popular Direct File program.

Biden Tax Reforms Take a $16 Billion Bite Out of Trump’s Big Tax Giveaway to Meta

Meta’s earnings setback is entirely attributable to an important tax reform championed by the Biden administration in 2022.

Why States Shouldn’t Go Along With OBBBA’s Corporate Tax Breaks: A Practical Guide

States should immediately decouple from four costly corporate tax provisions in the new federal tax law.