A Guide To Fair State And Local Taxes
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has published a Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes online. Released in February of 2005, ITEP offers citizens, activists and policymakers a detailed primer on state and local tax policy.
The guide explains the differences between progressive, flat and regressive taxes. It covers the full range of taxes that states and localities can impose, including personal and corporate income taxes, property taxes, and sales and excise taxes.
Since its founding in 1980, ITEP’s work has played a key role in educating the public and informing federal and state tax reform debates.
For the first 15 years of its existence, ITEP worked extensively with Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), providing much of the research for important studies released by that organization. CTJ’s studies of federal corporate income taxation in the early 1980s are widely credited with fomenting an intense public debate over the wisdom of tax-based corporate subsidies. This debate eventually helped lead to a bipartisan consensus that many of these tax provisions were unwise public policy.
ITEP and CTJ reports, such as Inequality & the Federal Budget Deficit (1991), helped inspire new thinking about tax policy that later lead to the federal tax reforms adopted in 1993. ITEP has continued some of its work with CTJ, primarily on federal tax issues. In particular, in May of 1996, ITEP and CTJ published The Hidden Entitlements, a detailed analysis and critique of the hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden spending programs buried in the federal tax code.
To download the study in PDF format, go to www.itepnet.org/guide.htm.