Recent Publications

  • The Distributional and Revenue Impact of Hillary Clinton's Tax Plan

    A new Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analysis of the tax plan proposed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as of October, including recently proposed changes to the child tax credit, finds that the plan would raise federal revenues by $1.46 trillion over the next decade while providing a small tax cut on average to the bottom 95 percent of American taxpayers. The analysis also shows that those in the top 5 percent would see a significant tax increase.

    10/11/2016

  • Offshore Shell Games 2016

    This study explores how in 2015 Fortune 500 companies used tax haven subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes on much of their income. It reveals that tax haven use is now standard practice among the Fortune 500 and that a handful of the country's wealthiest corporations benefit the most from this tax avoidance scheme.

    10/04/2016

  • News Release: 367 Fortune 500 Companies Collectively Maintain 10,366 Tax Haven Subsidiaries

    In 2015, more than 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies maintained subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, according to "Offshore Shell Games," released today by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Collectively, multinationals reported booking $2.5 trillion offshore, with just 30 companies accounting for 66 percent of this total. By indefinitely stashing profits in offshore tax havens, corporations are avoiding up to $717.8 billion in U.S. taxes.

    10/04/2016

  • The Distributional and Revenue Impact of Donald Trump's Revised Tax Plan

    A new Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) analysis of the revised tax plan proposed by presidential candidate Donald Trump in September finds that the plan would reduce federal revenues by at least $4.8 trillion over the next decade while cutting taxes for all income groups. The analysis also shows the wealthiest top 1 percent of taxpayers' share of the tax cut would be 44 percent.

    09/26/2016

  • News Release: 44% of Tax Cuts in Trump's Revised Plan Would Go to Top 1% of Taxpayers

    A new distributional analysis of Donald Trump's tax plan reveals that 44 percent of the candidate's proposed tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, and the plan would increase the nation's deficit by $4.8 trillion over 10 years, Citizens for Tax Justice said today.

    09/26/2016

  • News Release: U.S. Should Take a Page from European Commission's Book and Crack Down on Corporate Tax Avoidance

    A statement by Matt Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy regarding the European Commission's ruling today that the Apple Corporation must pay as much as €13 billion ($14.5 billion) in back taxes due to an illegal tax break granted by the Irish government.

    08/30/2016

  • 2016 General Election: Presidential Candidates' Plans and Records on Taxes

    As the 2016 presidential race heats up, Citizens for Tax Justice will dig deep into candidates' records and analyze their current policy positions on tax issues. We've closely followed the work of many current and potential candidates in recent years, in many cases providing detailed distributional analyses of their tax plans and proposals.

    07/22/2016

  • Comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the Business and Financial Disclosure Required by Regulation S-K

    Corporate transparency is critical to an efficient and fair marketplace. In order to keep up with the rapid pace of change in our economy, the SEC is right to constantly reevaluate and improve upon its disclosure requirements. The rapid growth of foreign operations and related tax avoidance now necessitates that the SEC adjust by requiring companies to provide additional information on such operations. The offshore operations of these companies have simply become too crucial to our economy at large to remain in the shadows.

    07/21/2016

  • CTJ Comment Letter on Treasury's Anti-Inversion Rules

    Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) submitted comments this week in support of two parts of the Treasury's proposed anti-inversion rules, the Serial Inverter Rule and the Earnings Stripping Rule, while also urging Treasury to take additional action to curb corporate inversions.

    07/07/2016

  • Lax SEC Reporting Requirements Allow Companies to Omit Over 85 Percent of Their Tax Haven Subsidiaries

    Currently, there is no single source that allows the public to see all of a corporation's subsidiaries and how many of them are located in tax havens. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires publicly traded corporations to report all of their "significant" subsidiaries in their annual financial reports. In 2014, 358 Fortune 500 companies disclosed owning at least 7,622 subsidiaries in tax haven countries. [4] However, since companies are permitted to omit subsidiaries that do not meet the SEC's definition of "significant" (comprising at least 10 percent of the company's total assets, investments, or income), the true number of tax haven subsidiaries is likely dramatically higher than what is reported. In fact, this report finds that companies may be omitting more than 85 percent of their total and tax haven subsidiaries in their 10-K filings.

    06/30/2016

  • Ryan Tax Plan Reserves Most Tax Cuts for Top 1 percent, Costs $4 Trillion Over 10 Years

    A new distributional analysis of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's "A Better Way" policies finds that the plan would: add $4 trillion to the national debt over a decade; overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent of tax payers while resulting in a net loss for the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers; slash corporate tax collections by at least half.

    06/29/2016

  • News Release: CTJ Statement on Speaker Ryan's Tax Plan

    With rising income inequality, substantial deficits and lack of adequate revenue to fund public services, the nation should not be engaging in policy discussions about major tax cuts, especially cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations. But here we are--again. Speaker Ryan's latest tax reform blueprint proposes to gut the progressivity and adequacy of our federal tax code via enormous cuts in top tax rates, multiple new tax breaks and corporate tax changes.

    06/24/2016

  • News Release: New Report Finds 315 Fortune 500 Companies Used "Stock Option Loophole" to Collectively Avoid $64.5 Billion in State and Federal Taxes

    From 2011 to 2015, the executive stock option loophole enabled Fortune 500 companies to lavish their executives with salary in the form of stock and later write off the compensation to reduce their tax bills by, in some cases, billions, a new report released today by Citizens for Tax Justice found.

    06/09/2016

  • Fortune 500 Corporations Used Stock Option Loophole to Avoid $64.6 Billion in Taxes Over the Past Five Years

    One of the most egregious loopholes in the tax code, known as the stock option loophole, allows companies to deduct millions or billions from their taxable income for compensating executives in the form of stock options. Corporations can take these deductions even though granting stock options costs them nothing. CTJ has reviewed five years of corporate filings and found this loophole has allowed companies to annually avoid an average $13 billion in taxes. It should be noted that the average sum corporations are avoiding could be understated because not all corporations report information about stock options.

    06/09/2016

  • Guiding Principles for Tax Reform

    There is widespread agreement in Congress and among the American people that the U.S. tax system needs reform. Yet some proposed federal tax changes defy what most Americans would consider reform. This policy brief outlines three sensible, broad objectives for meaningful federal tax reform and discusses specific policies that can help achieve these objectives.

    06/08/2016

  • Corporation Integration: A Solution in Search of a Problem

    Since the beginning of this year, Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch has been working on a proposal to "integrate" corporate and shareholder level taxes into what he calls a single level of taxation. While Sen. Hatch has yet to release a specific proposal, the Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on May 17 that will examine the possibility of achieving corporate integration by allowing corporations to deduct the payment of dividends to shareholders and, thus, sharply reduce their corporate income taxes. This report lays out three of the biggest problems with this idea.

    05/16/2016

  • News Release: Statement by CTJ Director Bob McIntyre regarding the Senate Finance Committee's hearing today on business tax reform

    Rather than having yet another hearing on big-picture business tax reform, Congress should instead act immediately to close unwarranted loopholes.

    04/26/2016

  • Five Things You Should Know on Tax Day

    1. The nation's tax system is barely progressive. 2. The U.S. statutory corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, but many companies pay at a much lower rate. 3. Taxes in the United States are well below those of most developed nations. 4. U.S. multinational corporations are aggressively shifting their profits into low-rate foreign tax havens. 5. Various presidential candidates are proposing huge tax cuts that would paradoxically make most Americans worse off.

    04/14/2016

  • Who Pays Taxes in America in 2016?

    The federal income by itself is progressive. But when all of the taxes we pay are taken into account, most of that progressivity disappears.

    04/12/2016

  • Fifteen (of Many) Reasons Why We Need Corporate Tax Reform: Companies From Various Sectors Use Legal Tax Dodges to Avoid Taxes

    This CTJ report illustrates how profitable Fortune 500 companies in a range of sectors of the U.S. economy have been remarkably successful in manipulating the tax system to avoid paying even a dime of tax on billions of dollars in U.S. profits.

    04/11/2016

 

 

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