Author: tarek

When Washington State lawmakers approved a record $8.7 billion in tax breaks for Boeing and other aerospace companies last month, many observers hoped that the unprecedented scale of the new tax cuts—which will last through 2040—might open policymakers’ eyes to the folly of the “race to the bottom” that will eventually result from ever-increasing corporate giveaways. But Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s eyes remain firmly shut. Nixon has called a special legislative session to urge the Missouri legislature to approve tax cuts totaling $1.7 billion , also geared toward Boeing and other aerospace companies.

Nixon’s professed hope is that the tax breaks will entice Boeing to produce their 777X commercial aircraft in Missouri. But Boeing’s own taxpaying behavior suggests that for some, the “race to the bottom” may already be over: a recent CTJ report found that over the past decade Boeing managed to avoid paying even a dime of state income taxes nationwide on $35 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

When state governments force cuts in local tax collections, as New Mexico did almost a decade ago under Governor Bill Richardson, these cuts are often accompanied by a “hold harmless” promise, under which locals will (in theory) be reimbursed for the taxes they are no longer allowed to collect. But the hold harmless pledge often works out to be what Mary Poppins called a “pie crust promise”—easily made and easily broken. Just nine years after Governor Richardson burnished his tax-cutting credentials by exempting groceries from local (and state) gross receipts taxes—while simultaneously implementing a “hold harmless” provision so that locals wouldn’t feel the pain of losing such a large chunk of their tax base—a law is now in place that will completely phase out the hold-harmless aid to locals between 2015 and 2030.  A recent Santa Fe New Mexican editorial correctly rakes the legislature over the coals for its “fickle” attitude toward fiscally-strapped local governments.

The lesson for local policymakers facing the threat of state-mandated tax cuts? Hold-harmless provisions should be a basic component of any such cuts—but the state aid resulting from these provisions will be a all-too-tempting target for state lawmakers whenever the economy slows.

This week, the Supreme Court declined to hear the e-commerce industry’s challenge to New York’s trend-setting “Amazon law.”  The law, which was upheld by New York’s highest court, successfully expanded the number of online retailers collecting New York sales taxes.  It did this by requiring any e-retailer to collect the tax if they partner with New York based “affiliates” to generate over $10,000 in sales.  Because of the law, Amazon.com has been collecting sales taxes from its New York customers for more than 5 years, generating millions in revenue for public services and making the state’s sales tax base slightly more rational.

In the wake of the Court’s refusal to hear Amazon.com and Overstock.com’s appeals, some observers are already predicting that more states will be tempted to follow New York’s lead.  And follow it they should.  More than a dozen states have “Amazon laws” patterned after New York’s and while they’re not a panacea for the tax base erosion that online shopping has caused, they are the best option states have available to them right now.

If anybody needs to pay attention to the Court’s ruling, though, it’s the U.S. House of Representatives.  Almost seven months ago the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would have made New York’s law irrelevant by empowering all states to apply their sales tax collection laws more broadly to all e-retailers above a certain size.  The bill has widespread support among traditional retailers and a broad coalition of state-level lawmakers, but has so far been stopped—like many other reforms—by the House’s aversion to virtually anything that would improve tax collections at any level of government.

In what has been a cherished annual tradition for tax accountants everywhere, the day is approaching—January 1, to be precise—when dozens of temporary federal income tax provisions are set to expire. The so-called “extenders”—tax breaks enacted by Congress on a temporary basis and extended at the last minute, usually because lawmakers can’t find a way to pay for making them permanent—include a rogue’s gallery of ineffective giveaways ranging from the research and experimentation tax credit to a special write-off for race horses. One of these temporary tax breaks is an increase in the income tax exclusion for employer-provided mass transit to make it equal the existing exclusion for employer-provided parking benefits. As an NPR story recently explained, the expiration of the mass transit increase would create a glaring inequity between workers who use mass transit and those who drive: come January 1, Americans who drive to work will be able to write off $250 a month in employer-provided benefits for commuting-related costs, while those relying on mass transit will only be able to exclude $130 a month of such expenses from income.

If this seems unjustifiably discriminatory, that’s because it is: there’s no defensible rationale for systematically giving car commuters a bigger tax break than those relying on mass transit. Policymakers sensibly want commuters to rely on public transit because it reduces highway gridlock and pollution—benefits that accrue to all Americans, however they get to work. No one thinks it’s a smart idea to encourage more Americans to drive to work rather than using mass transit—yet that could be the impact of allowing the mass transit subsidy to fall at year’s end.

One seemingly-obvious solution, promoted by Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer, would maintain the status quo, which gives the exact same tax benefit for mass transit that is available for those driving to work. But this approach is disturbingly discriminatory as well: like any exclusion from the progressive federal income tax, it offers bigger benefits to the upper-income taxpayers who pay at the highest marginal rates—and offers the least to those low-income workers who earn too little to pay federal income taxes. (Since fringe benefits like parking subsidies are excluded from the federal payroll tax as well, the exclusion does offer some benefits to even the poorest workers.)

This isn’t to say that making commuting more affordable is a bad idea: for the many low-wage workers who can’t afford to live in the central cities where they work, a long and costly commute is often a harsh reality. Yet the current tax subsidies for driving and mass transit are at best an inefficient way of solving this problem. For every dollar of tax break given to a low-wage worker, these subsidies give a much bigger tax break to the best-off Americans. Allowing the temporary higher benefit for mass-transit commuters to expire would be the worst possible way of paring back this tax break. A more straightforward alternative would be to simply end all tax subsidies for costs of commuting to work and instead put this revenue toward public investment in better and more affordable transportation infrastructure.

American Express’s Tax Avoidance Opposed by Most Small Businesses

Since 2010, American Express has boosted itself as a supporter of small businesses, by promoting “Small Business Saturday” as a counterpart to Black Friday. But American Express is no friend of American small business. Not only does it charge merchants high swipe fees, but it also uses and wants to expand offshore tax loopholes that most small businesses can’t use and want to close.

A short report from CTJ explains that the company’s SEC filings indicate it is holding $8.5 billion in low-tax offshore jurisdictions, including at least 22 offshore subsidiaries in 8 jurisdictions typically identified as “tax havens.” By its own estimates, American Express has avoided paying $2.6 billion in U.S. taxes by holding these profits offshore. To give some perspective, this amount is two and half times the budget of the entire Small Business Administration.

Even on the $21.3 billion in pretax profits that American Express officially earned in the U.S. over the past five years, the company has paid only half the 35 percent federal statutory tax rate.

Read the CTJ report.

Read the report.

Business lobbyists are pushing Congress to enact tax “extenders” — a bill to extend several temporary tax breaks for business that expire at the end of this year. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice examines the largest of those provisions, the federal research and experimentation tax credit, a tax subsidy that is supposed to encourage businesses to perform research that benefits society. The report explains that the research credit is riddled with problems and should be either reformed dramatically or allowed to expire.

Created in 1981, the credit immediately became the subject of scandals when it was claimed by businesses that no ordinary American would consider deserving of a tax subsidy (or any government subsidy) for research — like fast food restaurants, fashion designers and hair stylists.

Reforms enacted in 1986 were supposed to prevent these abuses, but there is evidence that corporate tax planners have often out-maneuvered the reforms.

The report explains that many of the problems it describes are the work of accounting firms that wrote the book on abusing the credit — and quite literally wrote the credit regulations as well. The credit’s rules are so lax thanks in large part to Mark Weinberger, a Bush top Treasury appointee who had previously lobbied for a broader definition of “research” while he was at Ernst and Young and, after he left the Treasury, returned to a grateful Ernst and Young where he was eventually promoted to CEO.

Another firm behind abuses of the credit is Alliantgroup, a tax consulting firm with former IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson serving as its vice chairman and Dean Zerbe, former senior counsel to former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, as its managing director.

Members of Congress have pushed to remove what reasonable restrictions remain on the research credit. For example, the report explains that Senators Charles Grassley and Amy Klobuchar have both called on the Treasury Department to make it easier for businesses to claim the credit on amended returns for research done in previous years, which cannot possibly achieve the goal of providing an incentive to do research. (A business’s research cannot possibly be the result of a tax incentive that the business was unaware of until years after the research was carried out.)

Meanwhile, a report coauthored by former Clinton adviser Laura D’Andrea Tyson argues that Congress should simply repeal the reforms of 1986 and make legal the abuses that the IRS is trying to stop.

The CTJ report explains that even when the credit is claimed by companies doing legitimate research, it’s difficult to believe that the research was a result of the credit.

Congress should let the research credit expire, and redirect the billions of dollars that it costs into true, basic, truly scientific research, which businesses rarely engage in because the payoffs often take years to arrive.

The report explains that if lawmakers insist on extending the research credit once again when it expires at the end of 2013, they should address three broad problems. If these problems are not addressed, then the credit should be allowed to expire.

Read the report.

MassBudget, in partnership with the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Campaign, has launched a new website: “Investing in the Future: Revenue Options to Give Every Child the Opportunity to Learn.”  This website is a resource for education advocacy organizations, grassroots groups, and others who are interested in undertaking a statewide campaign to raise revenue for public education.  It provides information on options for raising adequate revenues for education in progressive ways so that every child can have the opportunity to learn.

If you’re looking for a short explanation of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and a summary of how states differ in their EITC policies, look no further than the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s (ITEP) recently updated policy brief.  Short primers on more than 40 tax policy topics are available in ITEP’s full library of policy briefs.

Here’s a great piece by the Associated Press about the perils of not modernizing state tax structures.  Missouri’s income tax brackets haven’t been changed since the Great Depression, and now updating those brackets would cost the state billions in revenue.  For more on the importance of indexing to maintaining a modern tax structure, check out ITEP’s policy brief.

Say it ain’t so… An Ohio Senator is proposing a sales tax holiday to help “lure Kentucky shoppers” to the Buckeye State.  Read why this is a horrible idea in ITEP’s brief, Sales Tax Holidays: An Ineffective Alternative to Real Sales Tax Reform.

During Thanksgiving we tend to reflect on the year’s events and remember what we’re grateful for. This was a doozy of a year for tax analysts, with the federal government shutting down and state legislatures across the nation threatening deep cuts to major sources of revenue. But, nonetheless, as we look back on the year we have many things to be grateful for:

— That the taxes we all pay help make our communities, our states and country stronger and more vibrant.  Our tax dollars are used to provide public education, clean air and water, well-connected road and public transit systems, safe streets, affordable health care, and income supports for working families.

— That every state that started 2013 with a personal income tax continues to have one, despite efforts in Louisiana, Nebraska, and North Carolina to dismantle their most progressive form of taxation.

— That poor families in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, the District of Columbia, and Montgomery County, Maryland will find it a little easier to make ends meet now that lawmakers in those states and localities approved expansions to various low-income tax credits.

— For the Americans who have demanded that Congress address the tax avoidance uncovered by CTJ and carried out by huge corporations like GE, Apple, and Boeing.

— That CTJ’s proposal to increase the Medicare payroll tax for the wealthy, and subject their investment income to the same type of tax, is part of the health care reform law in effect now.

— That Senator Max Baucus’s tax reform proposals (so far) do not give corporations their dream of ending all U.S. taxes on profits they claim to earn offshore and that many members of Congress are signalling a new seriousness about closing loopholes that allow corporations to shift profits into offshore tax havens.

Additionally, we thank our donors and friends for making our work possible.  Unlike other groups, who have one large benefactor, CTJ and ITEP rely on our thousands of supporters for funding.  2013 has been a banner year for CTJ and ITEP as we have seen a dramatic increase in online contributions, but our work has never been so important, so please consider CTJ or ITEP in your holiday giving to help us prepare for the tax fights ahead in 2014.

We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving!

Voters in 36 states will be choosing governors next year.  Over the next several months, the Tax Justice Digest will be highlighting 2014 gubernatorial races where we expect taxes to be a key issue. Today’s post is about the race for the Governor’s mansion in Wisconsin.

To many Wisconsinites, it may seem like yesterday that Governor Scott Walker survived a recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. But in less than a year, he’ll be up for reelection. This time Mary Burke, a Trek Bicycle Corp. executive and state Commerce Department secretary, is the Democrat hoping to unseat him.  During the campaign, Walker will most certainly tout his record of cutting taxes, but anyone who’s paid attention knows his record is nothing to be proud of.

This year alone he signed legislation that both cut property taxes and reduced income tax rates in a way that does little for Wisconsin’s neediest residents – the opposite, actually. In fact, the budget he introduced in 2011 was called a betrayal of Wisconsin values by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy and other public interest groups because he ultimately approved legislation that reduced the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), thus increasing taxes on the state’s poorest working families. That budget also included $2.3 billion in tax breaks over a decade, in the form of a domestic production activities credit, two different capital gains tax breaks for the rich, and a variety of new sales tax exemptions, including for snowmaking and snow grooming equipment.

Challenger Mary Burke is being cautious and has yet to put out her own tax plan. She recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, however, that she would not take a pledge to not increase taxes, saying, “I’d want to look at the totality. We collect revenue in a lot of different ways. I certainly wouldn’t look at raising (taxes), but I’d also want to look at it in the context of our finances, our budgets …” When we learn more about her plan, we’ll review it for you here.

Update: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed the gas tax increase described below into law on November 25, 2013.

One of 2013’s biggest state tax policy issues—the gasoline tax—continues to make headlines long after most state legislative sessions have come to a close for the year.  We’ve already written about how lawmakers in Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia enacted gas tax increases or reforms earlier this year.  But within just the last week, four more states have been in the news with high-profile proposals to raise their own gas taxes—including Pennsylvania, which appears to be on the verge of both increasing and reforming its tax.  Here’s what’s been happening:  

Pennsylvania is one of a small number of states where the legislature is still in session (most state sessions ended this spring).  This week, both the Pennsylvania House and Senate passed a bill that would gradually raise the gas tax by allowing it to rise alongside gas prices, much like an ordinary sales tax.  This is not a new idea in the Keystone State.  Prior to 2006, Pennsylvania’s gas tax actually functioned in exactly this manner, though the 32.3 cent tax has since run up against a poorly designed gas tax “cap” that the legislature is now seeking to lift.  When combined with increases in vehicle registration fees, license fees, and traffic fines, the overall package is expected to raise $2.3 billion per year for roads and transit.  As of this writing the bill needs to be approved by the House one more time before going to Governor Tom Corbett’s desk where it is expected to be signed into law.

In Washington State, The Olympian is reporting that “a bipartisan transportation revenue package now looks possible” after the coalition of lawmakers in control of the state senate backed an 11.5 cent gas tax increase.  The tax increase would be phased-in over the course of three years and is actually somewhat larger than the 10 cent increase sought by Governor Jay Inslee and House Democrats earlier this year.  As we explained in June, Washington’s gas tax would remain relatively low by historical standards even if the Governor’s 10 cent increase had been enacted into law.  The same is true of an 11.5 cent increase.  Lawmakers could potentially act on the 11.5 cent plan within the next few weeks if a special legislative session is called.

Utah business leaders, local officials, and other stakeholders are continuing to make the case that public investments in infrastructure will help the state’s economy succeed, and that the gas tax is the best way to pay for those investments.  On Wednesday, local officials testified before an interim transportation committee in support of a plan to allow localities to levy a 3 percent gas tax.  Unlike Utah’s fixed-rate gas tax—which actually stands at its lowest level in history as a result of inflation—this 3 percent tax should do a reasonably good job keeping pace with future growth in the cost of transportation construction and maintenance.  At the same hearing, a Republican state representative testified in support of his own plan to raise the state’s gas tax by 7.5 cents per gallon, phased-in over the course of five years.

The gas tax has been a frequent topic of discussion in Iowa these last few years, and it doesn’t seem like that’s about to change any time soon.  As in Utah, Iowa’s gas tax is at an all-time low (after adjusting for inflation), but one of the state’s candidates for governor in 2014 would like to change that.  Democrat Jack Hatch has proposed raising the tax by a total of 10 cents over the course of 5 years.  Current Governor Terry Branstad, who is eligible to seek reelection next year, is noticeably less excited about the idea.  But Branstad has said he won’t veto a gas tax increase if one makes it to his desk.