Publications
Common Good Iowa regularly releases reports, fact sheets and briefs on an array of policy priorities to advance opportunity for all Iowans. Browse them here.
Tag: Charles Bruner
State budget and taxes
June 2004
Income tax changes passed in 2003 by legislators but vetoed by Governor Tom Vilsack would have made Iowa's overall tax system less fair, one of the ways the plan violated widely accepted principles for tax policy. This 2004 piece by Charles Bruner, then executive director of the Child and Family Policy Center, illustrates how tax policy can be evaluated properly on the basis of tax principles, of fairness, competiveness, public benefit and economic efficiency, revenue adequacy, stability and predictability, simplicity, and accountability.
January 2002
Iowa, like the rest of the nation, experienced a sustained period of strong economic growth in the 1990s. During this period, the Iowa General Assembly also enacted a number of tax changes, including very significant tax reductions in the latter part of the decade. This report by Peter Fisher and Charles Bruner examines the overall size of the economic growth and the tax changes, with a particular emphasis upon how these have affected Iowa families at different income levels.
This January 2002 report was the first joint effort of the Iowa Policy Project and the Child and Family Policy Center, two nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations focused on public policy research, analysis and advocacy. These organizations worked together for 18 years before officially merging in 2020 as Common Good Iowa.