The vast majority of the attention given to the Bush tax cuts has been focused on changes in top marginal rates, the treatment of capital gains income, and the estate tax.  But another, less visible component of those cuts has been gradually making itemized deductions more unfair and expensive over the last five years.  Since the vast majority of states offering itemized deductions base their rules on what is done at the federal level, this change has also resulted in state governments offering an ever-growing, regressive tax cut that they clearly cannot afford. 

In an attempt to encourage states to reverse the effects of this costly and inequitable development, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) this week released a new report, "Writing Off" Tax Giveaways, that examines five options for reforming state itemized deductions in order to reduce their cost and regressivity, with an eye toward helping states balance their budgets.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia currently allow itemized deductions.  The remaining states either lack an income tax entirely, or have simply chosen not to make itemized deductions a part of their income tax — as Rhode Island decided to do just this year.  In 2010, for the first time in two decades, twenty-six states plus DC will not limit these deductions for their wealthiest residents in any way, due to the federal government's repeal of the "Pease" phase-out (so named for its original Congressional sponsor).  This is an unfortunate development as itemized deductions, even with the Pease phase-out, were already most generous to the nation's wealthiest families.

"Writing Off" Tax Giveaways examines five specific reform options for each of the thirty-one states offering itemized deductions (state-specific results are available in the appendix of the report or in these convenient, state-specific fact sheets).

The most comprehensive option considered in the report is the complete repeal of itemized deductions, accompanied by a substantial increase in the standard deduction.  By pairing these two tax changes, only a very small minority of taxpayers in each state would face a tax increase under this option, while a much larger share would actually see their taxes reduced overall.  This option would raise substantial revenue with which to help states balance their budgets.

Another reform option examined by the report would place a cap on the total value of itemized deductions.  Vermont and New York already do this with some of their deductions, while Hawaii legislators attempted to enact a comprehensive cap earlier this year, only to be thwarted by Governor Linda Lingle's veto.  This proposal would increase taxes on only those few wealthy taxpayers currently claiming itemized deductions in excess of $40,000 per year (or $20,000 for single taxpayers).

Converting itemized deductions into a credit, as has been done in Wisconsin and Utah, is also analyzed by the report.  This option would reduce the "upside down" nature of itemized deductions by preventing wealthier taxpayers in states levying a graduated rate income tax from receiving more benefit per dollar of deduction than lower- and middle-income taxpayers.  Like outright repeal, this proposal would raise significant revenue, and would result in far more taxpayers seeing tax cuts than would see tax increases.

Finally, two options for phasing-out deductions for high-income earners are examined.  One option simply reinstates the federal Pease phase-out, while another analyzes the effects of a modified phase-out design.  These options would raise the least revenue of the five options examined, but should be most familiar to lawmakers because of their experience with the federal Pease provision.

Read the full report.

The vast majority of the attention given to the Bush tax cuts has been focused on changes in top marginal rates, the treatment of capital gains income, and the estate tax.  But another, less visible component of those cuts has been gradually making itemized deductions more unfair and expensive over the last five years.  Since the vast majority of states offering itemized deductions base their rules on what is done at the federal level, this change has also resulted in state governments offering an ever-growing, regressive tax cut that they clearly cannot afford. 

In an attempt to encourage states to reverse the effects of this costly and inequitable development, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) this week released a new report, "Writing Off" Tax Giveaways, that examines five options for reforming state itemized deductions in order to reduce their cost and regressivity, with an eye toward helping states balance their budgets.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia currently allow itemized deductions.  The remaining states either lack an income tax entirely, or have simply chosen not to make itemized deductions a part of their income tax — as Rhode Island decided to do just this year.  In 2010, for the first time in two decades, twenty-six states plus DC will not limit these deductions for their wealthiest residents in any way, due to the federal government's repeal of the "Pease" phase-out (so named for its original Congressional sponsor).  This is an unfortunate development as itemized deductions, even with the Pease phase-out, were already most generous to the nation's wealthiest families.

"Writing Off" Tax Giveaways examines five specific reform options for each of the thirty-one states offering itemized deductions (state-specific results are available in the appendix of the report or in these convenient, state-specific fact sheets).

The most comprehensive option considered in the report is the complete repeal of itemized deductions, accompanied by a substantial increase in the standard deduction.  By pairing these two tax changes, only a very small minority of taxpayers in each state would face a tax increase under this option, while a much larger share would actually see their taxes reduced overall.  This option would raise substantial revenue with which to help states balance their budgets.

Another reform option examined by the report would place a cap on the total value of itemized deductions.  Vermont and New York already do this with some of their deductions, while Hawaii legislators attempted to enact a comprehensive cap earlier this year, only to be thwarted by Governor Linda Lingle's veto.  This proposal would increase taxes on only those few wealthy taxpayers currently claiming itemized deductions in excess of $40,000 per year (or $20,000 for single taxpayers).

Converting itemized deductions into a credit, as has been done in Wisconsin and Utah, is also analyzed by the report.  This option would reduce the "upside down" nature of itemized deductions by preventing wealthier taxpayers in states levying a graduated rate income tax from receiving more benefit per dollar of deduction than lower- and middle-income taxpayers.  Like outright repeal, this proposal would raise significant revenue, and would result in far more taxpayers seeing tax cuts than would see tax increases.

Finally, two options for phasing-out deductions for high-income earners are examined.  One option simply reinstates the federal Pease phase-out, while another analyzes the effects of a modified phase-out design.  These options would raise the least revenue of the five options examined, but should be most familiar to lawmakers because of their experience with the federal Pease provision.

Read the full report.

And then there were seven.  With the enactment of a tax expenditure reporting requirement in Georgia late last week, only seven states in the entire country continue to refuse to publish a tax expenditure report — i.e. a report identifying the plethora of special breaks buried within these states’ tax codes.  For the record, the states that are continuing to drag their feet are: Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Wyoming. 

But while the passage of this common sense reform in Georgia is truly exciting news, the version of the legislation that Governor Perdue ultimately signed was watered down significantly from the more robust requirement that had passed the Senate.  This chain of events mirrors recent developments in Virginia, where legislation that would have greatly enhanced that state’s existing tax expenditure report met a similar fate. 

In more encouraging news, however, legislation related to the disclosure of additional tax expenditure information in Massachusetts and Oklahoma seems to have a real chance of passage this year.

In Georgia, the major news is the Governor’s signing of SB 206 last Thursday.  While this would be great news in any state, it’s especially welcome in Georgia, where terrible tax policy has so far been the norm this year. 

SB 206 requires that the Governor’s budget include a tax expenditure report covering all taxes collected by the state’s Department of Revenue.  The report will include cost estimates for the previous, current, and future fiscal years, as well as information on where to find the tax expenditures in the state’s statutes, and the dates that each provision was enacted and implemented. 

Needless to say, this addition to the state’s budget document will greatly enhance lawmakers’ ability to make informed decisions about Georgia’s tax code. 

But as great as SB 206 is, the version that originally passed the Senate was even better.  Under that legislation, analyses of the purpose, effectiveness, distribution, and administrative issues surrounding each tax expenditure would have been required as well.  These requirements (which are, coincidentally, quite similar to those included in New Jersey’s recently enacted but poorly implemented legislation) would have bolstered the value of the report even further.

In Virginia, the story is fairly similar.  While Virginia does technically have a tax expenditure report, it focuses on only a small number of sales tax expenditures and leaves the vast majority of the state’s tax code completely unexamined.  Fortunately, the non-profit Commonwealth Institute has produced a report providing revenue estimates for many tax expenditures available in the state, but it’s long past time for the state to begin conducting such analyses itself.  HB355 — as originally introduced by Delegate David Englin — would have created an outstanding tax expenditure report that revealed not only each tax expenditure’s size, but also its effectiveness and distributional consequences. 

Unfortunately, the legislation was greatly watered down before arriving on the Governor’s desk.  While the legislation, which the Governor signed last month, will provide some additional information on corporate tax expenditures in the state, it lacks any requirement to disclose the names of companies receiving tax benefits, the number of jobs created as a result of the benefits, and other relevant performance information.  The details of HB355 can be found using the search bar on the Virginia General Assembly’s website.

The Massachusetts legislature, by contrast, recently passed legislation disclosing the names of corporate tax credit recipients.  While these names are already disclosed for many tax credits offered in the state, the Department of Revenue has resisted making such information public for those credits under its jurisdiction. 

While most business groups have predictably resisted the measure, the Medical Device Industry Council has basically shrugged its shoulders and admitted that it probably makes sense to disclose this information.  Unfortunately, a Senate provision that would have required the reporting of information regarding the jobs created by these credits was dropped before the legislation passed.

Finally, in Oklahoma, the House recently passed a measure requiring the identities of tax credit recipients to be posted on an existing website designed to disclose state spending information.  If ultimately enacted, the information will be made available in a useful, searchable format beginning in 2011.

This week the Oklahoma Policy Institute released a report urging, among other things, that one of the state’s more ridiculous tax breaks be eliminated — specifically, the state income tax deduction for state income taxes.  This deduction was created not as a result of careful consideration and debate among Oklahoma policymakers, but rather as an accidental side-effect of the state’s “coupling” to federal income tax rules.  And as the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee politely points out, while the deduction may make some sense at the federal level, the rationale for providing it at the state level is “less clear.”

Citing figures provided by ITEP, the Oklahoma Policy Institute notes that only one out of four Oklahomans would be affected by eliminating this deduction, and roughly 58% of the overall tax hike would be borne by those richest 5% of Oklahomans.  This is a predictable result of the deduction only being available to itemizers.  In total, the state could collect an additional $118 million in revenue each year by eliminating the deduction — revenue that could go a long way toward preserving important public services.

State income tax deductions for state income taxes have been receiving a growing amount of attention.  Last year, Vermont limited its deduction to a maximum of $5,000, while just last week New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed a budget eliminating his state’s deduction entirely.  The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI) also highlighted the benefits of eliminating this deduction in a policy brief released just a few weeks ago.

In total, seven states currently offer this deduction: Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Vermont.  Eliminating the deduction in each of these states is long overdue.

A few weeks back, we wrote of the New Mexico legislature’s approval of $200 million in tax increases to help close the state’s $600 million budget gap.  While the plan included both progressive and regressive components, it was regressive overall.  Governor Richardson on Wednesday removed one of the most regressive components of the plan — a local sales tax on groceries — through the use of his line-item veto authority.

While the Governor’s veto does improve the state budget’s fairness overall, it also places New Mexico on less stable financial footing in the months ahead.  Furthermore, to make up for some of the revenue lost by repealing the tax on groceries, the Governor chose to eliminate a small low-income credit included in the legislature’s plan.  This development is very unfortunate, as the tax package still increases the rate of the state’s sales tax (known as the “Gross Receipts Tax” (GRT) in New Mexico) in a way that will result in substantially higher taxes for those families who would have benefited from the credit.

In a bit of good news, however, the Governor chose to leave intact the legislature’s repeal of the deduction for state income taxes.  This bizarre, circular deduction is now offered in only seven other states — Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Vermont — and should be looked at by all of these states as a potential source of much-needed revenue.  The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI) released a report earlier this month using ITEP data that explains why this tax break should be eliminated.

New Mexico's legislature held a short special session this week to deal with a $600 million budget deficit. On Wednesday, they sent Governor Bill Richardson a $200 million tax-increase package. About two-thirds of the tax hike consists of increases in the state's sales tax, known as the Gross Receipts Tax (GRT). The state GRT rate will increase by 1/8th of one cent from the current 5 percent, and local governments will be required to apply their sales taxes, which range as high as 2 percent, to groceries. The state will also boost GRT collections by $12 million by enforcing collection of the "use tax" on purchases from out-of-state vendors.

While each of these changes fall most heavily on low-income families, two other components of the revenue plan are progressive. First, the state will raise $60 million — about a third of the total package — by eliminating an unusual income tax break that bizarrely allows state itemizers to take their state income taxes as a deduction against their state income taxes. (Seven other states, including Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Vermont, also allow this deduction, and could shore up their personal income tax by eliminating this tax break.) Second, lawmakers increased — by a modest $5 million — the value of an existing low-income refundable tax credit.

Even with these two progressive measures, the tax package overall will still make New Mexico’s tax system somewhat more regressive.  Thankfully, however, the plan represents an improvement over at least two of the earlier versions (the Senate plan, and the legislative leadership plan) that were found to be even more starkly regressive in ITEP analyses produced this week.

At a press conference late last week, a group of nearly twenty progressive New Mexico legislators released their budget balancing proposal.  Among the most notable components of the proposal is a roll-back in personal income tax cuts (including those for capital gains) that were enacted in 2003.  The group also proposed higher income taxes targeted specifically at upper-income New Mexicans (defined as earning roughly $150,000 - $200,000 or more) and enacting combined reporting.  The group is also pushing for the state to take steps to apply the sales tax to additional purchases made over the Internet.  Finally, the proposal included familiar calls for higher taxes on cigarettes and soft drinks.

While Governor Bill Richardson has laudably acknowledged that the state must raise taxes to close its budget shortfall, he has so far fought efforts to roll back the tax cuts he enacted in 2003. He has also opposed efforts to impose higher taxes on upper-income New Mexicans, or to take additional steps to tax purchases made over the Internet. 

But rather than put forth a plan of his own, the Governor has expressed an interest in letting the legislature work out the details of a potential increase in state taxes.  This fact should hearten those progressive lawmakers who have proposed exactly the type of bold, progressive reforms New Mexico needs to overcome its current budgetary shortfalls.  Ideas like those advocated by this group of legislators should not be kept off the table.

Until this week, New Jersey was one of just nine states refusing to publish a tax expenditure report – i.e. a listing and measurement of the special tax breaks offered in the state.  Such reports greatly enhance the transparency of state budgets by allowing policymakers and the public to see how the tax system is being used to accomplish various policy objectives. 

Now, with Governor Jon Corzine’s signing of A. 2139 this past Tuesday, New Jersey will finally begin to make use of this extremely valuable tool.  Beginning with Governor-elect Chris Christie’s FY2011 budget, to be released in March, the New Jersey Governor’s budget proposal now must include a tax expenditure report.  The report must be updated each year, and is required to include quite a few very useful pieces of information.

The report must, among other things:

(1) List each state tax expenditure and its objective;
(2) Estimate the revenue lost as a result of the expenditure (for the previous, current, and upcoming fiscal years);
(3) Analyze the groups of persons, corporations, and other entities benefiting from the expenditure;
(4) Evaluate the effect of the expenditure on tax fairness;
(5) Discuss the associated administrative costs;
(6) Determine whether each tax expenditure has been effective in achieving its purpose.

The last criterion listed above is of particular importance.  Evaluations of tax expenditure effectiveness are extremely valuable since these programs so often escape scrutiny in the ordinary budgeting and policy processes.  Such evaluation can be quite daunting, however, and the Governor’s upcoming tax expenditure report should be carefully scrutinized in order to ensure that these evaluations are sufficiently rigorous.  One example of the types of criteria that could be used in a rigorous tax expenditure evaluation can be found in the study mandated by the “tax extenders” package that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives.  For more on the importance of tax expenditure evaluations, and the components of a useful evaluation, see CTJ’s November 2009 report, Judging Tax Expenditures.

Ultimately, New Jersey’s addition to the list of states releasing tax expenditure reports means that only eight states now fail to produce such a report.  Those states are: Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Wyoming.  Each of these states should follow New Jersey’s lead.

Southwest neighbors Arizona and New Mexico may share a common border, but news reports from each state this week make them look worlds apart.  

In Arizona, after refusing for months to support Governor Jan Brewer’s call for a temporary increase in the state’s sales tax, leading Republicans have put forward a tax plan of their own.  Unfortunately, rather than raising the revenue necessary to address the state’s staggering budget deficit of $4.4 billion (over the next 18 months), their plan would dramatically reduce personal and corporate income taxes, as well as the property taxes paid by businesses.

The backers of the plan claim that it would not worsen the state’s fiscal outlook, as the reductions would be phased in over a number of years. But that is precisely the approach the state followed over the course of the 1990s – a course of action that has put the state in its current predicament.  Moreover, while the plan apparently would not take effect until July 2011, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has indicated for quite a while that Arizona's revenues are unlikely to return to their pre-recession levels before that time.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, Governor Bill Richardson recommended raising taxes by $200 million (on a temporary basis) to help close the state's budget gap.  However, he appears to have left the details of which taxes to increase to the legislature and the Budget Balancing Task Force he appointed late last year. 

While the Task Force has an array of options before it, the best approach – the repeal of New Mexico’s tax break for capital gains income – has already been ruled out by the Governor. (This is no surprise, since Richardson was the break’s chief advocate when it was put into law in 2003.) Still, as ITEP found in its March 2009 report, “A Capital Idea,” capital gains tax breaks “deprive states of millions of dollars in needed funds, benefit almost exclusively the very wealthiest members of society, and fail to promote economic growth in the manner their proponents claim.”

For more on the fiscal crises in Arizona and New Mexico, visit Children’s Action Alliance and New Mexico Voices for Children.

This week, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), in partnership with state groups in forty-one states, released the 3rd edition of “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.”  The report found that, by an overwhelming margin, most states tax their middle- and low-income families far more heavily than the wealthy.  The response has been overwhelming.

In Michigan, The Detroit Free Press hit the nail on the head: “There’s nothing even remotely fair about the state’s heaviest tax burden falling on its least wealthy earners.  It’s also horrible public policy, given the hard hit that middle and lower incomes are taking in the state’s brutal economic shift.  And it helps explain why the state is having trouble keeping up with funding needs for its most vital services.  The study provides important context for the debate about how to fix Michigan’s finances and shows how far the state really has to go before any cries of ‘unfairness’ to wealthy earners can be taken seriously.”

In addition, the Governor’s office in Michigan responded by reiterating Gov. Granholm’s support for a graduated income tax.  Currently, Michigan is among a minority of states levying a flat rate income tax.

Media in Virginia also explained the study’s importance.  The Augusta Free Press noted: “If you believe the partisan rhetoric, it’s the wealthy who bear the tax burden, and who are deserving of tax breaks to get the economy moving.  A new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Virginia Organizing Project puts the rhetoric in a new light.”

In reference to Tennessee’s rank among the “Terrible Ten” most regressive state tax systems in the nation, The Commercial Appeal ran the headline: “A Terrible Decision.”  The “terrible decision” to which the Appeal is referring is the choice by Tennessee policymakers to forgo enacting a broad-based income tax by instead “[paying] the state’s bills by imposing the country’s largest combination of state and local sales taxes and maintaining the sales tax on food.”

In Texas, The Dallas Morning News ran with the story as well, explaining that “Texas’ low-income residents bear heavier tax burdens than their counterparts in all but four other states.”  The Morning News article goes on to explain the study’s finding that “the media and elected officials often refer to states such as Texas as “low-tax” states without considering who benefits the most within those states.”  Quoting the ITEP study, the Morning News then points out that “No-income-tax states like Washington, Texas and Florida do, in fact, have average to low taxes overall.  Can they also be considered low-tax states for poor families?  Far from it.”

Talk of the study has quickly spread everywhere from Florida to Nevada, and from Maryland to Montana.  Over the coming months, policymakers will need to keep the findings of Who Pays? in mind if they are to fill their states’ budget gaps with responsible and fair revenue solutions.

It's a time-honored, if puzzling, tradition. Elected officials pledge to put everything on the table in a relentless quest for tax reform -- except for a handful of tax breaks that they personally hold near and dear. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is the latest leader to pull this disheartening stunt.

Earlier this week, with the state facing a $400 million deficit, Richardson expressed his willingness to repeal various tax loopholes to help balance the budget. Unfortunately, Richardson continues to oppose closing one of the most unfair tax giveaways in the state's tax code: a 50% exclusion for capital gains income that he pushed through in 2003. He also dismisses the idea of reforming the state's $80 million film production tax credit.

This guidance doesn't leave lawmakers with a lot of sensible options for reform. They should ignore their governor altogether and look for answers in a new report from New Mexico Voices for Children, which presents a more open-minded menu of revenue-raising options that could help make the state's tax system simpler and fairer. These options include repealing the capital gains break, enacting combined reporting for corporate income taxes, and repealing income tax rate cuts enacted in 2003.

When New Mexico lawmakers convene for a special budget-balancing session this fall, the Voices for Children report will serve as a much better template for solutions than Richardson's half-hearted gesture towards loophole-closing.

So-called sales tax holidays, normally two- or three-day events that encourage shoppers to purchase back-to-school items tax-free, are bad policy for a variety of reasons. The holidays are poorly targeted, costly, and lull legislators into thinking that they've done something substantial to help reduce the regressivity of sales taxes.

The bottom line is that given the choice between targeted sales tax reform that takes into account one's ability to pay and a three-day sales tax holiday, lawmakers should always opt for targeted reform.

Last weekend a handful of states from Alabama to New Mexico held their sales tax holidays. (The Federation of Tax Administrators keeps a complete list of holidays here.) But because of the recent economic downturn, some legislators and economists are questioning the wisdom of not collecting sales taxes a few days a year.

Former chairman of South Carolina's Board of Economic Advisors Harry Miley certainly has his doubts about the effectiveness of sales tax holidays. He says that shoppers don't need incentives to go back-to-school shopping, and the cost to the state is quite high. He says, "The idea of a tax holiday for essential items doesn’t make any sense to me." For more on why sales tax holidays aren't all they are cracked up to be, see ITEP's Policy Brief.

Last week brought with it a flurry of news stories discussing the issue of how to pay for transportation infrastructure. This topic is never too far from the agenda in statehouses across the country, in large part because most states fund their infrastructures primarily with a fixed-rate gasoline tax (levied as a specific number of cents per gallon) which inevitably becomes inadequate over time as inflation erodes the value of that tax rate. What's more, with fuel efficiency becoming an increasingly important criterion in Americans' car-buying decisions, drivers are able to travel the same distance while purchasing less gasoline, and paying less in gasoline taxes.

With all this in mind, Mississippi's top transportation official last week publicly stated that the state's lawmakers need to increase their flat 18.5 cent per gallon gas tax rate. As evidence of this need, the official also noted that 25% of the state's bridges are deficient.

In a similar vein, one recent op-ed in Michigan called for increasing the state's gas tax and restructuring it to prevent it from continually losing its value due to inflation. Another op-ed ran in the same paper that day, this one written by the President of the Michigan Petroleum Association, insisting that the state eliminate the gas tax altogether and pay for the lost revenue with increased sales taxes. The most obvious flaw with this plan is that it would shift the responsibility for paying taxes away from long-distance commuters and those owners of heavier (and generally less fuel-efficient) vehicles -- despite the fact that these are precisely the people who benefit most from the government's provision of roads.

More news coverage of the transportation issue came out of South Dakota last week, where a committee of legislators is currently in search of additional revenue to plug the hole created by predictably sluggish gas tax revenues. While some have expressed an interest in raising the gas tax, others have suggested replacing it entirely with hugely increased licensing fees. But licensing fees are not as capable as the gas tax in charging frequent and long-distance drivers for the roads they use.

The best way to ensure that those drivers pay for the roads they use, however, is to simply levy a tax on each mile they drive (known as a "vehicle miles traveled" tax, or VMT). While the idea has yet to be implemented in practice in the U.S., recent coverage of a pilot project involving 1,500 drivers in New Mexico shows that such a tax is a very real possibility in the future. Basically, a small computer is installed in each car which keeps track of the number of miles driven. That information is then reported to the tax collection agency, and the driver is sent a bill.

This method avoids the scenario in which drivers of vehicles of similar weights (which produce similar wear-and-tear on any given road) can end up with vastly different gas tax bills due differences in fuel efficiency. Interestingly, this new study is examining a system that would allow the computer to know which state somebody is driving in, so that the correct amount of tax can be paid to the correct state. Unsurprisingly, despite the public finance appeal of this method, privacy concerns remain a major obstacle to implementation.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently released a very useful report summarizing tax expenditure reporting practices in the states, as well as methods for improving a typical state's tax expenditure report. For those unfamiliar with the term, a "tax expenditure" is essentially a special tax break designed to encourage a particular activity or reward a particular group of taxpayers. Although tax expenditures can in some cases be an effective means of accomplishing worthwhile goals, they are also frequently enacted only to satisfy a particular political constituency, or to allow policymakers to "take action" on an issue while simultaneously being able to reap the political benefits associated with cutting taxes.

Tax expenditure reports are the primary means by which states (and the federal government) keep track of these provisions. Unfortunately, most if not all of these reports are plagued by a variety of inadequacies, such as failing to consider entire groups of tax expenditures, or not providing frequent and accurate revenue estimates for these often costly provisions. Shockingly, the CBPP found that nine states publish no tax expenditure report at all. Those nine states Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Wyoming, undoubtedly have the most work to do on this issue. All states, however, have substantial room for improvement in their tax expenditure reporting practices.

For a brief overview of tax expenditure reports and the tax expenditure concept more generally, check out this ITEP Policy Brief.

As state policymakers craft their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, they must confront a pair of daunting challenges, one fiscal, the other economic. The budget outlook for the states is, at present, the most dire in several decades. In this context, then, states must find ways to generate additional revenue that create neither additional responsibilities for individuals and families struggling to make ends meet nor additional distortions in the economy as a whole.

For nine states -- Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin -- one straightforward approach would be to repeal the substantial tax breaks that they now provide for income from capital gains. In tax year 2008 alone, these nine states are expected to lose a total of $663 million due to such misguided policies, with individual losses ranging from $10 million to $285 million per state. A new ITEP report explains that repealing these tax preferences would help states reduce their large and growing budgetary gaps, enhance the equity of their current tax systems, and remove the economic inefficiencies arising from such favorable treatment.

This report explains what capital gains are, how they are treated for tax purposes, and who typically receives them. It also details the consequences of providing preferential tax treatment for capital gains income for states' budgets, taxpayers, and economies in nine key states. Lastly, it responds to claims about both the relationship between capital gains preferences and economic growth and the role capital gains taxation plays in state revenue volatility. (Appendices to the report provide detailed state-by-state estimates of the impact of repealing capital gains tax preferences.)

Read the report.