April 1, 2011 01:45 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | After passing the Arizona House and the Arizona Senate’s tax-writing committee, a sharply regressive flat tax bill died a sudden death this week when its sponsor admitted that he needed to address a number of flaws in the legislation. Data from […]
April 1, 2011 01:39 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Lawmakers in almost every state (44 according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) must close significant budget gaps again this year. Despite these continuing fiscal woes, a variety of costly tax cuts — from reductions in corporate tax rates […]
March 25, 2011 06:00 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | New Report from CTJ Explains the Right Way to Reform Corporate Tax – and Why the Amnesty Is the Worst Possible Change Corporate leaders are conducting a massive campaign for what amounts to a tax amnesty for corporate profits shifted out […]
March 25, 2011 05:49 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform and leader of the anti-tax movement, is used to getting his way, at least when it comes to politicians from conservative parts of the country. Many conservative lawmakers have signed ATR’s “Taxpayer Protection […]
March 25, 2011 05:48 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Every year around this time, lots of cutesy articles begin to appear listing a few bizarre tax breaks that you might be able to claim. We don’t necessarily want to jump on that bandwagon… but we just can’t help ourselves. If […]
March 25, 2011 05:45 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | The Iowa Fiscal Partnership has issued a policy brief about the destructive tax cuts that are being proposed in the state legislature. The cuts being debated carry a hefty price tag, $1.6 billion, most of which is from a proposal to […]
March 25, 2011 05:44 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | California Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to raise $9.3 billion in sorely needed revenue to help close a $26 billion budget gap through 2013 is in jeopardy. In January, he pitched the idea of allowing voters to decide whether or not to […]
March 25, 2011 05:16 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | We’ve noted before that lobbyists for extractive industries extract billions of dollars out of taxpayer pockets through special tax loopholes and subsidies at the federal level. Unfortunately, this is true at the state level as well. Even when states face unprecedented […]
March 25, 2011 07:22 AM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | A New York Times article explains how General Electric has obtained a negative corporate income tax rate on its U.S. profits. Its public filings show that it had $26 billion in U.S. profits over the last five years. Instead of paying […]
March 18, 2011 02:53 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | An op-ed by CTJ director Bob McIntyre that ran in several newspapers this week refutes Newt Gingrich’s recent claim that the government shutdown of 1995 led to a balanced budget. McIntyre writes: In a Feb. 27 article in the Washington Post, […]
March 18, 2011 02:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | On Wednesday, Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduced legislation to add additional brackets to the federal income tax so that millionaires and billionaires would be taxed at higher rates than they are today. A rate of 45 percent would apply to taxable income […]
March 18, 2011 02:48 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | There’s a lot happening lately in the world of tax justice (or injustice as the case may be) in Missouri. Here’s a quick roundup: The Good: Anti-Poverty Tax Policy This week a bill to introduce a 20 percent refundable Earned Income […]
March 18, 2011 02:47 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Capital gains income, which disproportionately flows to the wealthiest taxpayers, is taxed at lower rates than “ordinary” income like wages under the federal income tax. This is unfair for all sorts of reasons, and the unfairness is amplified in the eight […]
March 18, 2011 02:45 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | A recent Republican proposal in the Minnesota Legislature would cut the state’s bottom two income tax rates over three years. Thanks to Minnesota’s ability to provide tax incidence analysis (an examination of how different income groups are impacted by policy changes) […]
March 18, 2011 02:42 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Last week Illinois joined New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island by enacting legislation requiring Amazon.com and other online retailers working with in-state affiliates to collect sales taxes. Arkansas’s Senate and Vermont’s House recently passed similar legislation, and Arizona, California, Connecticut, […]
March 18, 2011 02:41 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Due to a technical error, we were unable to process requests for printed copies of the newly released ITEP Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes that were made prior to this Thursday (March 17). If you would like a printed […]
March 11, 2011 02:55 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, testified on March 9 before the Senate Budget Committee on tax subsidies for businesses. He explained that these tax breaks for business (1) are hugely expensive, (2) are often economically harmful, and (3) […]
March 11, 2011 02:54 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Last week we told you about Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to cut Michigan business taxes by nearly $2 billion annually, and to pay for it on the backs of seniors and low-income families. In an update to that story, ITEP […]
March 11, 2011 02:53 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Yesterday the Maryland House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing on a bill that would reinstate and make permanent the state’s recently expired 6.25% tax bracket on taxable incomes over $1 million. In advance of that hearing, ITEP released a […]
March 11, 2011 02:52 PM By Meg Wiehe, Deputy Director at ITEP | Permalink | A few weeks back, we surveyed efforts to impose new restrictions mandating that a supermajority of legislators vote in favor of a tax increase before it can become law. The good news is that most of these efforts appear to […]
March 11, 2011 02:51 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | On Sunday the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an interesting article about the capital gains tax breaks that Governor Scott Walker is proposing in his biennial budget. The article’s title “Walker’s proposed capital gains tax break gets lukewarm backing” says it all. […]
March 11, 2011 02:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | We’ve written before that state governments provide a wide array of tax breaks for their elderly residents. Almost every state levying an income tax now allows some form of exemption or credit for its over-65 citizens that is unavailable to non-elderly […]
March 11, 2011 02:49 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | Add North Carolina to the list of states considering increasing taxes on the low-income working families hit hardest by the economic downturn. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina recently filed a bill to convert the state’s refundable 5 percent Earned Income Tax […]
March 11, 2011 02:47 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | This week, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee joined the very short list of governors supporting a balanced approach to addressing significant revenue shortfalls. Like governors in Connecticut, Minnesota, Illinois, Hawaii, and North Carolina, Chafee included new revenue in his budget proposal, […]
March 4, 2011 01:50 PM By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff | Permalink | State governments face a budget crisis of historic proportions, and in recent months policymakers have responded with unpopular and frequently myopic spending cuts to close budget gaps. But there are alternatives. A new report, The ITEP Guide to Fair State and […]