Tax Justice Digest: Dear Treasury — Higher Ed Tax Breaks — Kicking Can Down the Road

Thanks for reading the Tax Justice Digest. In the Digest we recap the latest reports, posts, and analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 

Dear Treasury, Act to Stop Inversions
This week CTJ joined with 54 other organizations in signing a letter to the Treasury Department detailing actions it could take to curb inversions. CTJ’s Director Bob McIntyre also wrote his own letter to Treasury that you can read here.

Corporate Tax Watch: How Is This Legal?
ITEP’s Director Matt Gardner scratched beneath the surface of data solutions provider IHS’s proposed inversion. Seems the company’s tax accountants and attorneys have weaved quite a complex web: the company claims only 0.6 percent of its profits are domestic even though 60 percent of its customers are U.S.-based. Read our take on the company’s likely motivation for abandoning its U.S. citizenship.  

McIntyre Op-ed: No Free Lunch in Tax Policy
CTJ Director Bob McIntyre is exasperated with one-sided tax policy discussions. In an op-ed published in The Hill (Tall Tales and Half Analyses), he explains why analyses of tax cut proposals that don’t also talk about the spending and budgetary impacts should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. “Across-the-board tax cuts would benefit all Americans in the same way that “dropping hundred dollar bills from a helicopter would benefit all those beneath it,” he wrote. “However, in the long-run, tax cuts of this magnitude will have to be paid for, and it won’t be pretty.” Read Bob’s full op-ed here.

New Brief: Tax Breaks for Higher Education Could Do More for Working Families
Every state that levies a personal income tax has at least one tax break for higher education expenses, but often these credits are poorly targeted and, in the end, not the best way to ensure more people have access to higher education. Read ITEP’s Higher Education Income Tax Deductions and Credits in the States brief.

Three States Kick Can Down Crumbling Road on Transportation Funding
Legislators in Indiana, South Carolina and West Virginia all started the year on the right foot, looking at serious proposals to raise new revenue for transportation. Sadly, legislators in all three states did little to permanently fix their states’ transportation problems. For more details read ITEP’s blog post.

Pennsylvania Finally Has a Budget, But There is More Work to be Done.
We’ve kept our eyes on the Pennsylvania budget standoff for some time. Unfortunately, the measure slated to become law on Monday represents a missed opportunity. Read ITEP Senior Analyst Aidan Russell Davis’s take here.

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If you have any feedback on the Digest, please email me here:   kelly@itep.org To sign up to receive the Tax Justice Digest in your inbox click here. For frequent updates find us on Twitter (CTJ/ITEP), Facebook (CTJ/ITEP), and at the Tax Justice blog.