We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but undocumented immigrants do pay taxes. This week the Iowa Policy Project (IPP) released a report detailing their contributions to Iowa revenues using ITEP data. IPP found that undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $64 million in state and local taxes. Read IPP’s full findings here.
A News & Observer editorial last week lamented the revenue boom North Carolina might have enjoyed this year but for the package of steep income and corporate tax cuts passed in 2013. While numerous other states, including California, are beginning the fiscal year with healthy reserves, the N.C. Budget and Tax Center, using ITEP data, estimates that the cost of their state’s tax cuts could balloon to over $1 billion this year (almost double the reported amount of the tax cuts).
Rhode Island lawmakers recently enacted a budget for the new fiscal year which received a lot of attention for changes made to the corporate income tax (rate cut and adopting combined reporting) and cutting the state’s estate tax for a few wealthy households. But, as Kate Brewster of the Economic Progress Institute helps to explain in this op-ed, the budget deal also quietly hiked taxes on many low- and moderate-income families by eliminating a refundable credit used to offset regressive property taxes for non-elderly homeowners and renters. Brewster opines: “Given the struggles facing middle class Rhode Islanders — enduring unemployment, stagnant wages and a lack of affordable housing — it is hard to believe the state’s new budget includes huge giveaways for a handful of heirs while quietly taking money directly out of the pockets of low- and middle-income Rhode Islanders.
Next month Missouri voters will be asked to decide whether the state’s sales tax rate should be increased to pay for transportation improvements. The debate is raging, though no one seems to dispute Missouri has huge transportation needs. Tax justice groups like the Missouri Association for Social Welfare and even Governor Jay Nixon have argued that hiking the sales tax in the wake of income tax reductions would make the state’s tax system even more unfair. In a statement Nixon said, “This tax hike is neither a fair nor fiscally responsible solution to our transportation infrastructure needs.” It’s worth noting that the state has gone 18 years without an increase in their gas tax.