Tax Policy
Combined Reporting: How Closing
Corporate Loopholes Benefits Wisconsin
Author: Institute for Wisconsin's
Future
Date: February, 2009
The study documents, among other things, that states with combined reporting do much better at retaining manufacturing than do states without combined reporting. It also reports that most all of the state’s largest employers already comply with combined reporting in many other states, and have done so without abandoning their operations in those states. The points rebut the claim by combined reporting opponents that the tax reform would cost Wisconsin jobs.
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Investing in Revenue: How Wisconsin
can profit by using the Minnesota model for closing
the tax gap
Author: Institute for Wisconsin's
Future
Date: January, 2009
Wisconsin could generate nearly $100 million a year by increasing tax-enforcement efforts in the Department of Revenue, according to this IWF report. A $25 million investment in tax-enforcement resources for the Department of Revenue (DOR) could return $200 million in additional revenue in the coming state budget 2007-’09 biennium, the report argues. That is $175 million that state budget makers would not have to find through spending cuts or tax increases when they address the state’s deficit.
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The Catalog of Tax Reform Options
for Wisconsin
Author: Institute for Wisconsin's
Future and Wisconsin Council on Children and Families
Date: November, 2008
This catalog includes a number of suggestions for bringing additional tax revenue to the state, to help protect essential public structures in a time of economic distress. No specific item is endorsed, but the report stresses that some combination of the recommended measures is necessary for a balanced approach to addressing the looming deficit while preserving vital public services and infrastructure.
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Hospitable Taxes: How non-profit
hospitals profit from our out-dated tax system
Author: Institute for Wisconsin's
Future
Date: May, 2008
Wisconsin’s extensive roster of non-profit hospitals own at least six billion dollars worth of tax-exempt property that could be generating at least $117 million in property taxes yearly to help support local services, according to this IWF report.
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Wisconsin's Revenue Gap: An analysis
of corporate tax avoidance
Author: Institute for Wisconsin's
Future
Date: December, 2007
An IWF report that shows that Wisconsin lost $643 million in 2006 through corporate tax loopholes.
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Broken Partnership
How Wisconsin’s Corporate Sector Underpays
State and Local Taxes by $1 Billion
Author: Jack Norman, Ph.D. (IWF)
Date: April 11,
2007
An IWF report explaining how the business sector underpays taxes by over $1 billion.
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Buyer
Beware: Low-Income Homeowners Penalized Under
the Wisconsin Tax System – Policy
implications of the Wisconsin Tax Incidence
Study
Author: Jack Norman, Ph.D. (IWF)
Date: March 2005
Wisconsin’s allegedly progressive tax structure is a myth. And low-income married homeowners have the highest tax burden in the state.Those are two of the important results buried in the recent Wisconsin Tax Incidence Report, the state’s detailed analysis of who actually bears the burden of paying taxes. Mainstream media gave only cursory coverage to the report, but IWF now has a short overview of its main results.
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“Tax Hell” Hoax:
Why spending caps on state and local government
are wrong for Wisconsin
Author: Jack Norman, Ph.D. (IWF)
Date: January 2005
A new report skewers the argument that Wisconsin is such a “tax hell” that we must adopt strict new restrictions on state and local government spending.The image of Wisconsin as a “tax hell” has been cultivated by conservatives to create an appearance of legitimacy for proposed limits on government spending, such as the so-called Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (also known as TABOR). When one looks carefully at the facts, however, there is no tax hell to be found.
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Some Facts About Property Taxes
in Milwaukee
Author: Jack Norman, Ph.D. (IWF)
Date: November 2003
Did you know that the property tax burden on City of Milwaukee taxpayers has remained stable in recent years, and taxpayers now are paying a smaller percentage of their income in city property taxes than 20 years ago? This brief report offers conclusions based on tax and income data obtained from the City of Milwaukee and the U.S. Census Bureau. (2 pp.)
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Tax Funding for Private School
Alternatives: The Financial Impact on Milwaukee Public
Schools and Taxpayers
Author: Thomas Moore, Ph.D. (IWF)
Date: October 1998
This report finds that the Milwaukee Public Schools lose over $22 million in state aid under the current funding system for voucher and charter school programs. (14 pp.)
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Has Wisconsin’s
State Tax System Become Less Fair? Changes in the
Distribution of Tax Burdens from 1974 to 1995
Authors: Andrew
Reschovsky (La Follette Institute of Public Affairs
and Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics/University
of Wisconsin-Madison) & Chad Reuter (Wisconsin
Department of Transportation)
Date: June 1997
This study reveals how major elements of our tax system have changed over the past couple of decades, and how each change affected the relative tax burden on non-elderly, married couple families. The authors note a number of ways that the state tax system could be made more progressive. (39 pp.)
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Windfall for the Wealthy: The Impact
of 1995 Property Tax Relief Legislation on Wisconsin
Households
Author: Bambi L. Statz (College
of Business and Economics/School Business Management
Program/University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)
Date: January 1997
This study examines 1995 school finance and property tax relief legislation on a district-by-district basis. The author finds that there is minimal tax relief for taxpayers in moderate or property-poor school districts and increased inequality in the state school financing structure, which benefits residents of wealthy school districts. (47 pp.)
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Public Investment; Private Gain:
A Review of Wisconsin's Corporate Tax Expenditure
Budget from Fiscal Years 1974 to 1994
Author: Michael Rosen (Economics
Department/Milwaukee Area Technical College)
Date: May 1995
This study shows that over the past 20 years, tax expenditures, often characterized as corporate welfare in Wisconsin, have grown at an astronomical rate while the state economy has grown only moderately. (19 pp.)
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