Tennesseans for Fair Taxation (TFT)

The group may be defunct, as it filed its most recent full tax return in tax-year 2013 and its most recent e-Postcard in 2016. Its tax-exempt status was automatically revoked in 2020. ²

Background

Tennesseans for Fair Taxation was a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1996 ³ as to advocate liberal tax policies in Tennessee. ¹

Its tax-exempt status was automatically revoked in 2020 by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for not filing nonprofit tax returns. ² Its last full tax return was for 2013 and its last e-Postcard for very small organizations was filed for 2016. ⁴

Its website no longer exists and the last posting on its blog was from September 2012. ¹

Focus Areas

According to Tennesseans for Fair Taxation’s archived blog postings, it advocated reducing Tennessee’s reliance on sales taxes by creating a broad-based state income tax to make the tax system more equitable for low-and moderate-income households. ¹

Some of TFT’s lobbying campaigns involved exempting food purchases from sales tax and passing a progressive state income tax, as well as closing tax loopholes to prevent companies from paying taxes on profits made in Tennessee to other states. ⁵

Funding

The earliest posted tax return for Tennesseans for Fair Taxation was for 2001, on which the organization reported revenues of $200,409 and expenses of $216,081. ⁶ In 2009, it began filing Form 990-EZ for its taxes, a form used by smaller tax-exempt organizations that report less than $200,000 in gross receipts and less than $500,000 in total assets. Its last 990-EZ tax return, filed for 2013, reported revenue of $21,675 and net assets of $19,830. It filed the 990-N e-Postcard, available for the smallest nonprofit organizations, through 2016. ^{4  7 2}

Leadership

Brian Miller was the executive director of Tennesseans for Fair Taxation from 1997 to 2009. In 2009, he became executive director of United for a Fair Economy, which focuses on exposing the “deep-seated systemic causes of inequality.” In 2014, he moved on to become executive director of Nonprofit VOTE which works with nonprofit organizations that encourage people to vote. ^{8  9}

Bill Howell was a frequent organizer and opinion writer for TFT’s blog site. He was an architect with an interest in community organizing focused on Nashville and Tennessee at large, including Nashville Organized for Action and Hope and Tying Nashville Together. ¹⁰ He was listed as an interim executive director on the TFT blog site as of 2026. ¹