Jason Levitis Quotations

The poorest 40 percent of Hawaii residents, those with incomes under $31,000, would receive only 20 percent of the benefits of the tax-cut bill.

Hawaii is one of the very worst states in the treatment of working poor.

Michigan's threshold had been consistently under the poverty line. The threshold in Michigan is slipping compared to the poverty line.

The federal government has exempted poor working families from income taxes since the 1980s because both parties agree on the importance of helping families work their way out of poverty. Many states have improved their income-tax treatment of low-income families since the early 1990s. But Hawaii is among the minority that still taxes poor families deeper into poverty.

Alabama is in some sense the star of this report, but that's not a compliment. Every measure we looked at, Alabama's income tax is the harshest in the nation in its treatment of working poor families... Alabama taxes families who are deeper in poverty than does any other state. It's the only state that taxes families in extreme poverty.