The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) is a tax and budget policy advocacy group that focuses on state and federal tax policy issues. It holds 501(c)(3) status and is ostensibly non-partisan for tax reasons,^[1] though the left-of-center Pew Research Center has described ITEP as a “liberal think tank.” ^[2]

Political Ideology

While self-described as politically neutral, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy was described as a “liberal think tank” by Pew Research Center. ^[3] The organization’s official Twitter account has posted and retweeted articles critical to President Trump’s tax policies. ITEP also posted a Salon article to their website alleging GOP donors to be the only class favorable to Trump’s tax cuts. ^[4]

Microsimulation Tax Model

ITEP’s Microsimulation Tax Model is their rubric for tax analysis which includes a wide range of tax data from local, state, and federal levels. The program is designed to estimate tax implications based on proposed changes to tax policy. The same method of analysis is used by the U.S. Treasury Department, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office. ^[5]

Leadership

Alan Essig became the Executive Director of ITEP in April 2017. Prior to his current appointment Essig served as the executive director with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a left-of-center tax policy group associated with the labor-union-backed Economic Analysis and Research Network that he founded in 2004. ^[6] He holds a master’s degree in public administration from SUNY Albany and received a commendation from the Georgia State Senate for his contribution in a variety of legislative capacities related to budget and tax policy. ^[7] Upon his appointment in 2017 his salary was $106,731 with a supplemental compensation of $17,535. ^[8]

Essig has involved himself in political narratives, notably by criticizing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump. ^[9] Essig has also retweeted many critical and even vulgar tweets about President Trump. ^{[10][11][12][13]}

“Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States”

“Who Pays” is ITEP’s flagship advocacy publication, produced in five editions since 1996. The report analyzes what is paid for and by whom per state, breaking down the results by class, jurisdictions, and other socioeconomic variables. The report also breaks down different topics pertinent to tax dialogue such as the variance between progressive, regressive, and proportional tax models. ^[14]

In October 2018 the latest edition of “Who Pays” was challenged by the right-of-center Tax Foundation. The rebuttal claimed that ITEP failed to comprehensively identify who was paying state tax and that the report “is overwhelmingly a measure of the progressivity of the individual income tax, and not of the tax code as a whole.” ^[15]