August 30, 2011 10:47 AM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Republican House Majority Eric Cantor’s memo to his caucus laying out a new “jobs agenda” includes a tax break that would allow any “small business” to deduct 20 percent of its income for tax purposes. This idea is not new but […]
August 29, 2011 10:12 AM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The twenty companies that repatriated the most offshore profits under the temporary repatriation amnesty enacted by Congress in 2004 now have almost triple the amount of profits “permanently reinvested” (i.e., parked) overseas as they did at the end of 2005. The […]
August 25, 2011 02:39 PM By Richard Phillips, Senior Policy Analyst at ITEP | Permalink | Last week, Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo together approved a substantial increase in the toll rate paid to cross bridges and tunnels between New York and New Jersey. The increase of […]
August 25, 2011 02:26 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | This week Colorado’s Secretary of State confirmed that Coloradans will be able to vote on a measure (Proposition 103) this November that would temporarily raise the state income and sales tax rates. While the plan isn’t the most progressive option imaginable, […]
August 25, 2011 02:22 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Anti-tax lawmakers and activists in Kansas and Missouri continue to promote ideas to repeal their state income taxes and replace some of the revenue with a huge consumption tax. As ITEP’s Meg Wiehe explained in a recent Kansas City Star article, […]
August 25, 2011 02:21 PM By Meg Wiehe, Deputy Director at ITEP | Permalink | Hot off of signing an expensive and unfair $400 million tax cut for Mainers in June, Maine Governor Paul LePage is now promoting a new regressive tax break targeted to older adults. He would like for state lawmakers to fully […]
August 25, 2011 02:19 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Given the recent and unprecedented government shutdown, you’d like to think that lawmakers in Minnesota would want to make it easier, not harder, for the state to balance its budget. But some lawmakers haven’t learned their lesson and are, in fact, […]
August 25, 2011 01:53 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | By now everyone has heard about presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s statement that “corporations are people.” “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people,” Romney explained to hecklers in Iowa. Of course, it’s true that corporate earnings eventually go to people and that […]
August 24, 2011 12:26 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry has endorsed both the concept of a flat income tax and the so-called “Fair Tax,” which is a national sales tax. A three-page report from CTJ explains that both of these proposals would result […]
August 22, 2011 03:33 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | We couldn’t help but laugh when we saw the title of last week’s Wall Street Journal editorial. For those of you that have followed the “millionaire migration” debate, it should be a very familiar one. First, a little background: Over the […]
August 19, 2011 04:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Unless Congress acts, federal gas and diesel taxes will fall by about 80 percent on September 30. If this is allowed to happen, spending on our nation’s already inadequate roads and transit systems will likely plummet, and Congress will face massive […]
August 18, 2011 02:42 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | If you’ve ever bought something online, then most likely you’ve cheated on your taxes. Not many realize it, but people making online purchases are required to pay sales taxes on those purchases directly to their state government. Unfortunately, hardly anyone reports […]
August 17, 2011 05:41 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry said that he is “dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” He should know that Americans pay other types of federal taxes besides just federal […]
August 17, 2011 05:26 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) offers a series of Policy Briefs designed to provide a quick introduction to basic tax policy ideas that are important to understanding current debates at the state and federal level. Over the next […]
August 17, 2011 04:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, called for higher taxes for millionaires in a widely-noted op-ed this week. As expected, the Wall Street Journal reacted with a variety of misleading counter-arguments. We conclude that: Buffett is correct […]
August 17, 2011 01:42 PM By Meg Wiehe, Deputy Director at ITEP | Permalink | Earlier this year, governors in West Virginia and Arkansas signed legislation to lower their states’ sales tax on food, a policy both had championed. West Virginia lowered the state’s sales tax on food from 3 to 2 percent and Arkansas’ […]
August 12, 2011 04:55 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Republican Candidates Completely Walk Away from Balanced Approach “Just making sure everyone at home and everyone here knows that they all raised their hands. They’re all saying that they feel so strongly about not raising taxes that a 10 [spending cuts] […]
August 12, 2011 12:15 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) offers a series of Policy Briefs designed to provide a quick introduction to basic tax policy ideas that are important to understanding current debates at the state and federal level. This week, ITEP […]
August 12, 2011 10:52 AM By Richard Phillips, Senior Policy Analyst at ITEP | Permalink | As predicted, the bad news about Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s infamous property tax cap is already starting to roll in as local governments begin to grapple with the law’s implications. In the Town of Southhampton, for instance, the local […]
August 11, 2011 06:04 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) did some aggressive media outreach to get the word to consumers and retailers that sales tax holidays are more political PR than smart economic policy. In fact, we earned a front page article […]
August 11, 2011 04:48 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | UPDATE 8/12/11: It appears there may now be a third path forward. The Tennessean reports that Gov. Haslam recently began negotiations with Amazon in order to have the company collect sales taxes. Such a deal would likely involve giving the company […]
August 11, 2011 03:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today appointed members to fill the three seats allotted to her for the 12-member “super committee” created under the recent debt deal. Last December, all three voted against the “compromise” that extended the Bush tax cuts […]
August 11, 2011 03:16 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Super Committee Should Either Focus Entirely on Revenue, or Simply Allow Automatic Sequestration to Go into Effect Numerous surveys show that large majorities of Americans want Congress to address the deficit with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The […]
August 11, 2011 03:14 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | At the end of last week, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), one of the three major credit rating agencies, downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States for the first time and specifically stated that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire […]
August 9, 2011 07:30 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The three Democratic Senators appointed by Harry Reid to sit on the “super committee” established under the debt deal voted for the President’s disastrous budget compromise in December of 2010 that extended the Bush tax cuts for another two years. […]