Our Mission
Citizens for Tax Justice, founded in 1979, is a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation.
Goal: CTJ works to ensure working people have a voice in the development of our nation’s tax policies. Against the armies of special interest lobbyists for corporations and the wealthy, CTJ work is focused on:
Citizens for Tax Justice is driven by the knowledge that tax justice is key to racial, gender and environmental justice. Read more about our core principles.
Careful, reliable quantitative and qualitative research are essential to achieving these goals and helping elected officials make informed policy decisions. But it’s also imperative that tax policy research is accessible to working people who have a vested interest in making sure the nation’s tax policies work for them, their families and their communities. CTJ is a resource for working people, advocates and others who are interested in tax fairness and want to have a voice in state and federal tax policy decisions.
Corporations are more profitable than ever. But the bounty is not being shared with rank and file workers. For the last four decades, the income divide between the very rich and the poor has grown exponentially. Median income has barely budged. Tax policy has played a role in this trend.
Being able to use a collective voice to speak up for fair, sustainable tax policies is vital because working people are up against a well-funded army of special interests who lobby for lower corporate and individual taxes at the state and federal level. These special interests continually push state and federal tax policies that would exacerbate income inequality by cutting taxes for corporations and the nation’s richest households. Too often, such tax policies are discussed in a vacuum and disconnected from the vital public services that they help fund. Polling shows the majority of the public do not support tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. CTJ is a resource for those in the majority to tell lawmakers what they think tax policy priorities should be.
Starting in 2017, CTJ’s partner organization ITEP took over its research functions so that CTJ could focus entirely on advocacy and helping ordinary Americans make their voices heard on issues related to tax fairness. The type of research reports on federal tax issues that were previously found on CTJ’s website can now be found at www.itep.org.
For current tax policy research, visit our resources page
or, visit the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy