Iowa human services advocates are drawing lines to connect the choices of secret tax breaks for big corporations — $32.8 million worth in 2005 — and state lawmakers' inability to find funding to improve the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families. Read the news release from the Iowa Human Needs Advocates, and read our two-page backgrounder.

Also read the Des Moines Register story.

On issues of tax fairness, Iowa's personal income tax system falls most short in its tax treatment of families with children. In fact, Iowa's income tax system is the most skewed against families with children of any state income tax system in the country. Expanding Iowa's Earned Income Tax Credit can improve the lot of those families. Read the two-page backgrounder.

The research is in and the data are clear: Iowa’s outdated, and increasingly leaky, tax code needs reform. Over time, special provisions have been incorporated to give advantage to different special interests, while tax accountants and attorneys have found ways to manipulate the code to help their clients escape taxes. A prime example of how our tax code has been skewed to benefit the wealthy: Iowa's special treatment of capital gains. Read the two-page backgrounder.

Rapid growth in the adoption and use of tax credits are contributing to an unsustainable, structurally imbalanced budget in Iowa, suggesting lawmakers should take a step back and immediately (1) provides for public disclosure of the beneficiaries of all business-directed tax credits; (2) revise and limit existing tax credits; and (3) establish a moratorium on the enactment of any additional tax credits. Read the two-page backgrounder.