Category: My Work

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Corporate Tax Cuts Since 2002 Now Cost PA $4.2 Billion Yearly: Pennsylvania Should Pass Worldwide Combined Reporting

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Policy reports, Taxation

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. By Stephen Herzenberg, Diana Polson, and Marc Stier This paper focuses on the details of one part of this story: the cuts in corporate taxes in Pennsylvania since 2002 that have reduced revenues by what is now $4.2 billion per year and have created a tax system that is among the most unfair in the country.   Pennsylvania’s tax-cutting, shaped by the corporate-sponsored narrative, has taken a variety of forms. Under both Republican and Democratic governors, we have entirely eliminated one of our two major taxes on corporations, the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax (CSFT). We have also allowed businesses to lower their reported profits subject to the largest remaining corporate tax—the Corporate Net Income (CNI) tax. And we have continued to give multi-state corporations free rein to cook their books and exploit corporate tax loopholes to their reported income subject to the CNI. The result is that 73% of corporations that do business in Pennsylvania pay no corporate income tax at all.1  This policy brief updates estimates of the cost each year to the Pennsylvania budget from corporate… Continue reading

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The 2019-20 Enacted Budget: How Did Education Fare?

  By Budget analysis

Originally published by KRC-PBPCP here. By Diana Polson and Marc Stier While this 2018-19 budget increase moves us in the right direction with increased funding for education, it still does not adequately and equitably fund our schools across the Commonwealth. In order to do that, Pennsylvania must find recurring revenue sources. Read the Overview of the 2019-20 enacted budget for education below. Continue reading

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On Today’s Ruling on the Affordable Care Act Individual Health Insurance Mandate

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. Today’s 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court rules the ACA’s requirement that people have health insurance is unconstitutional because Congress has repealed the tax penalty for those who don’t have health insurance. But it steps back from the conclusion reached a year ago by Federal Judge Reed O’Connor that the entire ACA is unconstitutional. Both parts of the decision were expected by reasonable legal scholars. The individual mandate was upheld by the Court in NFIB v. Sibelius in 2012 on the grounds that it was an exercise of Congress’s power to tax individuals. The repeal of the tax undermined this rationale for the individual mandate put forward by Chief Justice Roberts in that case. Judge O’Connor went much further and argued that without the individual mandate, the entire ACA is unconstitutional, even though there was no explicit indication in the law that said the… Continue reading

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Yes, the U.S. Constitution could be improved. The process in this Pa. House resolution isn’t a path forward

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Published Op-Eds, US Constitution

Originally published by the PA Capital-Star on December 18, 2019. On Monday, the House State Government Committee passed a resolution asking Congress to call a constitutional convention, pursuant to Article V of the U.S. Constitution. It’s not hard to understand the temptation to support this resolution. We live at a time of political division in Pennsylvania and in our country as a whole. We are all tempted to think about whether some change in our constitution might help us resolve our difficulties. It’s useful to start thinking about these issues. However, as a political scientist who has thought long and hard about our constitution, my own ideas on the matter are not terribly fixed, simply because the question is so difficult and the considerations that should weigh on us in examining changes in a constitution that has served us so well require the time for serious thought and substantial debate. But… Continue reading

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Election Reform Enacted!

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. Yesterday, Governor Wolf signed Act 77, historic legislation that expands the opportunity to vote in Pennsylvania. The legislation includes the following provisions: No excuse mail-in voting: The law creates a new option to vote by mail without providing an excuse, which is currently required for voters using absentee ballots. Pennsylvania joins 31 other states and the District of Columbia in instituting mail-in voting. 50-day mail-in voting period: All voters can request and submit their mail-in or absentee ballot up to 50 days before the election, which is the longest vote-by-mail period in the country. The law also allows county election officials to establish an unlimited number of satellite offices where citizens can register, pick up a mail-in ballot, and deposit their ballot. Establishing satellite offices in communities that have historically low voting rates will do much to encourage more Pennsylvanians to vote. Permanent mail-in and absentee ballot… Continue reading

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The Problem with Act 77: Eliminating Straight Ticket Voting

  By Elections and Voting, Memos, PA Budget and Policy Center

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. To: State legislators, editorial board writers, political reporters, and interested parties From: Marc Stier, Director, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Re: Elimination of Straight-Ticket Voting and Related Matters Voting is the fundamental political right of all Americans. And so, election reform must mean making it easier, rather than harder, for Americans to cast their votes for every office. Sadly, there is a long legacy in this country of doing the opposite. Whether put forward by racists determined to protect white supremacy or good government “reformers” determined to weaken the political power of immigrants and the working class, American states have adopted a series of proposals—such as onerous barriers to registration, limited hours and times for voting, too-frequent purges of the voter rolls, and Voter ID laws—that, inadvertently or in many cases deliberately, have made it more difficult to vote. A package of election reforms is now under… Continue reading

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PA Protects Against Insurance Losses Caused by Trump

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. A census bureau report released on Tuesday shows that 1.9 million more Americans were uninsured in 2018 than in 2017, with the rate of those uninsured rising from 7.9% to 8.5%. However, in Pennsylvania the rate is unchanged at 5.5%, and the best estimate we have is that only 7,000 fewer people have health insurance in the state (and even that difference might just be a result of sampling error). We have better results in Pennsylvania than nationwide as a result of the aggressive steps taken by the Wolf administration to expand access to health insurance in the state. Health insurance rates are dropping nationwide because of a relentless attack by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans on the Affordable Care Act. At the outset of his administration, Trump issued an executive order calling on federal agencies to waive and delay ACA provisions ‘to the maximum extent… Continue reading

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Some Steps Forward Amid Major Disappointments: Pennsylvania’s Enacted Budget 2019-2020

  By Policy reports

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. By Diana Polson and Marc Stier Pennsylvania enacted a $33.997 billion budget on June 28, 2019. And for the second year in a row, the budget was in place by the June deadline. This year, unlike his first few years in office, Governor Wolf did not seek major spending initiatives and ask for new broad-based revenues. And that made it easier to reach agreement with the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Indeed, it was the members of his own Democratic Party who expressed the most dissatisfaction with the final budget, largely because it did not include the increase in the minimum wage he requested and eliminated the General Assistance program he proposed to fund after it was restored by the Courts last year. We share the disappointment about these two parts of the budget and also regret that the state’s current politics doesn’t allow our government to… Continue reading

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Will There Be a Child Care Benefit Cliff if We Raise the Minimum Wage?

  By Childcare, Minimum Wage, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports

Published by KRC-PBPC here. Introduction Raising the minimum wage is one of the most important steps that Pennsylvania can take to fix a political economy that has been tilted against working people for decades. Two bills before the General Assembly, HB1215 and SB12, propose increasing the minimum wage to $12 per hour on July 1, 2019, and increasing the wage in 50-cent increments until it reaches $15 per hour in 2025. Raising the minimum wage to $15 would ultimately lift wages for two million Pennsylvanians, not only those who make the minimum wage now or who would after an increase, but also many whose wages would be pushed higher when the floor on wages is raised. Raising the minimum wage would also help local economies and the economy of the state as a whole by giving working people the capacity to buy more goods and services. Every state around Pennsylvania… Continue reading

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Increased Income from a Minimum Wage Increase is Greater, and in most cases, Far Greater Than the Loss in Benefits and New Taxes Paid

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Press release

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. By Marc Stier and Diana Polson HARRISBURG—As Pennsylvania seriously considers raising the minimum wage for the first time in over a decade (and as the U.S. House prepares to vote on a bill to increase the minimum wage federally), concerns have been raised that workers receiving a higher wage also will face a “benefits cliff.” A benefits cliff occurs when individuals get a wage increase but the social benefits they lose and the taxes they pay increase more than their additional earnings, resulting in an overall reduction in a family’s standard of living. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center today released two policy briefs examining the effects of a minimum wage increase to $15/hr in Pennsylvania. One brief examines a wage increase when compared to any cuts in benefits from programs/tax breaks like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), the… Continue reading