Building automatic and long-term economic relief during the coronavirus crisis

  The economic fallout from the coronavirus response has happened quickly, but its effects will be long-lasting. As Congress reconvenes to debate the next round of funding priorities, it must employ strategies that work in tandem to get economic relief to the wide range of people who need it: the millions who have lost jobs, small businesses that have been shuttered, states and cities facing budget shortfalls, and communities that are facing disproportionate health burdens. These policy approaches should be designed to provide significant support right away; effectively address the public health crisis; mitigate the economic harm to people; and begin to build towards an eventual equitable recovery.

Five reasons why strengthening the EITC and CTC is the kind of tax reform America needs

  As Americans filed their taxes this season—a process filled with confusion for many and startlingly small refunds for some—Democrats in Congress offered a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s unpopular tax law in the form of two ambitious tax plans that actually work for working families. While Trump’s 2017 tax law rewrote the tax code to further enrich millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations, congressional Democrats’ proposals—the American Family Act (AFA) and the Working Families Tax Relief Act (WFTRA)—would double down on two of the tax code’s most effective income boosters for working and middle-class families: the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC).

For low-income Americans, the IRS is always shut down

  The ongoing partial government shutdown has dragged on for more than 27 days, and it doesn’t look like the Trump administration is interested in ending it any time soon. One of the agencies affected is the IRS, and the longer the shutdown continues, the likelier it is that tax season becomes ensnared in a significant way. The Trump administration was spooked enough by the prospect of people not receiving their 2018 tax refunds that it ordered furloughed IRS employees back to work despite the fact that it may be illegal.

Trump Administration says poverty barely exists and measuring it is ‘arbitrary’

  According to a recent Trump administration report, when poverty is “properly measured,” less than 3 percent of Americans are poor. If that sounds like a dramatic underestimation to you, that’s because it is—the comparable Census Bureau estimate is four times higher. That’s the difference between saying there are about 11 million people with below-poverty incomes in the United States (about the population of Georgia), or 44.8 million (roughly the combined populations of Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia).

4 losers and 1 big winner in the House GOP tax plan

  On November 2, House Republicans released a tax plan that would provide an enormous windfall for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. In fact, of the more than $1.4 trillion in tax cuts included in the bill over the next decade, $1 trillion would go to businesses and corporations, and nearly $200 billion would go towards reducing, and eventually eliminating, the estate tax. Millionaires would enjoy the biggest tax cuts of all thanks to the corporate tax cuts, the elimination of the estate tax and alternative minimum tax, reduced tax rates on higher incomes, and the creation of a special new loophole on so-called passthrough business income.

Melissa Boteach: Reimagining our social contract

  Every year, the Bureau of the Census releases its estimate of how many Americans lived below the federal poverty line at a specific point in time during the previous year. For the past several years, the official poverty rate has remained steady at about 15 percent.

  Hearing this statistic, one might conclude that the same 15 percent of Americans remain stuck at the bottom, year in and year out, constituting the nation’s poor. But look beyond the point-in-time data, and you will find an important but rarely discussed fact: It is not the same 15 percent year after year.