Jon Whiten

@whitenjon.bsky.social

Deputy Director @ Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Dad to 4. Pet dad to many. Husband to the best one out there.

The way the House reconciliation bill uses the tax code to punish immigrants + their citizen family members is unprecedented & immoral. This weaponization of the tax system will also lead to more complicated work for the IRS at a time its funding is being significantly cut.

House Tax Bill Would Create a Parallel, Harsher Tax Code for Immigrant Filers and their Citizen Family Members

Immigrant tax filers face a harsher tax code than citizens in some important respects. Sweeping tax legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives would apply new or stricter limits for i...

itep.org

The House worked all night under the cloak of darkness to deliver huge tax breaks for wealthy Americans and foreign investors while stripping health care and food assistance from millions of Americans.

New analysis of the tax provisions in the House reconciliation package: The richest 1% of Americans would receive a total of $138 billion in net tax cuts in 2026, significantly more than the $92 billion that would go the bottom 60% of Americans.

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The damaging House tax bill is heading toward a floor vote later this week. It gives two-thirds of its tax cuts to the top 20% of families and 41% to the top 5% of families, all while taking health care and food assistance away from millions of Americans. itep.org/house-tax-pl...

The House Tax Plan, By the Numbers

The House of Representatives unveiled a sprawling piece of tax legislation earlier this week that would extend temporary tax changes enacted in 2017 and layer various kinds of tax cuts and increases o...

itep.org

The $86 million Congress proposes to spend in FY26 repealing the excise tax on firearm silencers is trivial. But it's a little alarming that, at $200 a pop, we apparently buy over 400,000 silencers a year. And JCT appears to think we're going to buy 15% more of them each year going forward.

SETBACK. The GOP's big sweeping bill just failed in the Budget Committee, 16-21. Five Republicans voted NO. "The NOs have it. The committee stands in recess, subject to the call of the chair," Jodey Arrington says.

There's a lot of talk of helping "working people" in the House tax bill through Trump's campaign promises on tips, OT, car loan interest, and senior tax breaks. Thing is, those only amount to 4% - YES, 4% - of the tax cuts in the bill. No wonder the thing is regressive. itep.org/house-tax-pl...

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With roughly the same amount of $, the House GOP wants to: 1) take away food assistance from as many as 4 million kids and 7 million adults 2) give an estate tax cut to a few thousand people who will leave behind more than $7 million to their heirs Talk about priorities! itep.org/house-tax-bi...

House Tax Bill Would Encourage Dynastic Wealth Hoarding by Further Weakening the Estate Tax

The sprawling tax and spending bill before the House of Representatives would cut more than $200 billion from food assistance, potentially affecting 4 million children and 7 million adults, while prov...

itep.org

"Uncertain tax benefits," explained --> Corporation to SEC: I'm taking some tax breaks that, if investigated, would likely be illegal. IRS: zzzzzz Statute of limitations: Time's up! Corporation: Yay, I get to keep those tax breaks! itep.org/what-corpora...

What Corporations Have to Gain from the Gutting of the IRS

Seven huge corporations recently announced that in 2024 they were allowed to collectively keep $1.4 billion in tax breaks from previous years that they had publicly admitted would likely be found ille...

itep.org

NEW: GOP lawmakers are preparing reconciliation bill with $90-175 BILLION in new funding for immigration enforcement. ICE's entire annual budget is ~$9 billion. Inside the Trump administration's plan for the real mass deportation campaign: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc... @theatlantic.com

Trump’s Mass-Deportation Campaign Hasn’t Really Started Yet

The Trump administration’s campaign to remove millions of people from the United States could soon be supercharged by Congress.

theatlantic.com

With Trump reportedly planning to end the IRS Direct File program, there's no better time to remember how TurboTax owner Intuit spent two decades fighting to prevent Americans from filing their taxes online for free. (Published 2019)

Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free

Using lobbying, the revolving door and “dark pattern” customer tricks, Intuit fended off the government’s attempts to make tax filing free and easy, and created its multi-billion-dollar franchise.

propublica.org

Missouri Republicans are pushing a radical, anti-worker tax plan that fully exempts all capital gains from taxes ⚠️ The top 1% would get 320x the tax cut of a middle-class taxpayer, according to @itep.org Exempting capital gains is unambiguously bad for working people www.epi.org/blog/missour...

Missouri Republican state lawmakers are pushing a radical anti-worker tax plan

The piece has been updated to reflect the latest version of the bill passed by the Missouri Senate, which no longer eliminates the state earned income tax credit, reduces the corporate income tax, or ...

epi.org

States need to get ready, because their tax revenues are under threat from a number of federal actions: * The budding trade war * Aggressive immigration actions & rhetoric * Federal employee layoffs & canceled contracts * Cuts to IRS tax enforcement * Potential new federal income tax carveouts

Sharp Turn in Federal Policy Brings Significant Risks for State Tax Revenues

Summary The new presidential administration and Congress have indicated that they intend to bring about a dramatic federal retreat in…

itep.org