Raising Revenue Through Municipal Corporate Taxation

The 2017 partisan tax reform law accelerated the United States’ rising inequality by slashing taxes of wealthy individuals and corporations and expanding the federal deficit, ultimately straining municipal budgets. In order to restore fairness to the tax code and generate revenue for infrastructure and other social needs, this report provides local examples of taxation strategies that target corporations contributing to inequality and wealthy property owners; these include case studies of cities implementing CEO pay gap taxes, high end real estate taxes to fund affordable housing, and vacancy taxes, and cities reducing corporate tax subsidies.