August 5, 2014 05:30 PM By Sebastian Johnson, State Policy Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Voters in 36 states will be choosing governors this November. Over the next several months, the Tax Justice Digest will be highlighting 2014 gubernatorial races where taxes are proving to be a key issue. Today’s post is about the […]
August 4, 2014 04:25 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Everyone loves a bargain, so it’s no surprise that sales tax holidays are hugely popular in the 17 states hold them. Over the past few weekends, 13 states temporarily suspended their sales tax, and four more will do so in […]
August 4, 2014 03:17 PM By Rebecca Wilkins, Senior Counsel, Federal Tax Policy at CTJ | Permalink | The current wave of inversions may be motivated by tax avoidance, but the real driver behind the deals is Wall Street. Advisers of every sort—investment bankers, attorneys, accountants, private equity and hedge fund managers—are pushing companies to […]
August 4, 2014 12:06 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | The idea that tax cuts pay for themselves repeatedly has proven to be nonsense, perhaps most spectacularly when President George W. Bush’s own Treasury Department concluded that his enormous tax cuts did not produce anywhere near enough economic growth to […]
August 1, 2014 04:36 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | On Thursday, Congress ended a chapter of its latest manufactured crisis by addressing the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund just hours before the Department of Transportation would have been forced to cut funding for state and local projects by […]
July 31, 2014 04:16 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Consumers in 16 states this year will be given the opportunity to participate in a sales tax holiday (most of which will happen this weekend). These so-called holidays are a temporary break on paying sales tax on purchases of clothing, […]
July 31, 2014 03:02 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | It’s bad enough when an American corporation reincorporates as a foreign company to avoid U.S. taxes even as it benefits from research, education, highways, courts and everything else those taxes pay for. But it’s even worse when these companies are […]
July 31, 2014 02:42 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | While experts have noted the many, many problems with Congressman Paul Ryan’s new poverty plan, the same experts have said that it does include a good idea about expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for childless working people. Ryan, […]
July 30, 2014 05:23 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Three months after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” it remains an open question whether Piketty’s tome will be remembered more for its thorough documentation of the growth of global inequality or for the shabby treatment […]
July 30, 2014 05:00 PM By Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Staff | Permalink | On the same day that the New York City Independent Budget Office released a report showing that wealthy New York City residents who move are overwhelmingly choosing high-tax states to live in journalist David Cay Johnston penned an editorial in the […]
July 30, 2014 02:38 PM By Sydni Pierce, Intern at ITEP | Permalink | South Carolina voters should have no problem drawing distinctions this fall when it comes to their gubernatorial candidates’ visions for the state’s tax structures (or lack thereof) in a year when the issue of fairness in state taxation is likely to […]
July 29, 2014 03:47 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | In a Tax Notes article published Monday, Harvard Law School professor Stephen E. Shay bemoans the recent wave of corporate inversions and suggests that if Congress does not take legislative action, the Obama Administration could take regulatory action to prevent […]
July 28, 2014 02:14 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | It’s far more common to see bare feet than sneakers on the streets and beaches of Bermuda, but major athletic footwear manufacturer Nike reports having six subsidiary companies on this island nation with population of about 65,000 people. That’s six […]
July 28, 2014 10:30 AM By Rebecca Wilkins, Senior Counsel, Federal Tax Policy at CTJ | Permalink | If you were listening to last week’s Senate Finance Committee hearing on corporate inversions, you might have thought you’d accidentally stumbled into a HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee hearing on some strange new epidemic. Finance […]
July 28, 2014 10:12 AM By Sebastian Johnson, State Policy Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | It is an article of faith among anti-tax activists that cutting taxes makes states more competitive. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Gov. Rick Scott frequently invoke the gospel of low taxes when they poach jobs in blue states […]
July 25, 2014 03:48 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | On July 25 the House of Representatives approved a Republican bill that would expand the child tax credit for better off families while doing nothing to extend or make permanent a 2009 provision that expands the credit to the working […]
July 25, 2014 02:10 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | While most of us consider ourselves upstanding, taxpaying citizens, imagine if Uncle Sam had a rule that stated individuals must report all their income to the IRS–unless it’s “not practicable” or too difficult to do so. And imagine if the […]
July 25, 2014 12:28 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Gene Simmons rocks. The front man for glam-band Kiss rocked decades ago, he rocks now, and he will continue to rock into his old age. Few Americans who came of age in the 1970s would contest this assertion. But Simmons’ […]
July 24, 2014 04:22 PM By Richard Phillips, Senior Policy Analyst at ITEP | Permalink | Odds are that a Tuesday D.C. circuit court ruling declaring health care subsidies to be illegal is not a real threat to the Affordable Care Act, but it is an important reminder about the crucial role that tax subsidies […]
July 24, 2014 10:54 AM By Rebecca Wilkins, Senior Counsel, Federal Tax Policy at CTJ | Permalink | What the heck is a derivative and why do we care? A derivative is a financial instrument whose value and performance depends on another asset. For example, let’s say a lender owns mortgages worth $100 million. The […]
July 23, 2014 03:15 PM By Sebastian Johnson, State Policy Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Voters in 36 states will be choosing governors this November. Over the next several months, the Tax Justice Blog will highlight 2014 gubernatorial races where taxes are proving to be a key issue. Today’s post is about the race […]
July 22, 2014 04:32 PM By Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director at CTJ | Permalink | Today the Senate Finance Committee discussed corporate inversions and other problems with the U.S. corporate tax code but showed no signs of bipartisan agreement on a solution. The hearing was held mainly to address the recent wave of corporations making […]
July 22, 2014 01:51 PM By Sydni Pierce, Intern at ITEP | Permalink | The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy published a report on Monday highlighting a disturbing trend that’s made inroads even in solidly progressive states over the past year: the weakening or complete dismantling of state estate taxes. Three states – Indiana, […]
July 18, 2014 04:34 PM By Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | Abbott Labs CEO Miles White is shocked that anyone would see the recent wave of U.S. multinationals seeking to renounce their U.S. citizenship as a tax dodge. In a July 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed, White suggests that there are […]
July 18, 2014 01:27 PM By Sebastian Johnson, State Policy Fellow at ITEP | Permalink | More bad news for Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. In a stunning development, over 100 current and former Republicans endorsed Brownback’s Democratic challenger, Congressman Paul Davis. The group “Republicans for Kansas Values” includes state legislators, mayors and RNC delegates, among […]