Anisha Steephen

Tax filing season is here — and the Trump administration has left the IRS in chaos. I joined @scrippsnews.bsky.social to break down what that actually means for taxpayers trying to navigate the mess.

6/6 The wealth at the top was built by extracting from all of us. They call it "their" wealth. We call it unpaid wages, unaffordable rent, gutted public services. And the tax-flight panic? Top earners move out at ¼ the rate of everyone else.

Tax wealth. Fund dignity for all. Govern for the people.

5/6 Hochul calls herself a "staunch capitalist" and argues against taxing the wealthy because she wants to "broaden the pool." That is tired trickle-down logic. It also undermines the affordability platform she's running for re-election on.

4/6 Hochul believes she controls the budget. But she's chosen to cede that power to wealthy people and corporations who act as an unofficial second chamber. Her first question should be "what do New Yorkers need?" but instead it's "will the ultrawealthy approve?"

3/6 Then to fund basic services, we became dependent on taxing the same people who benefited from starving them. This is the system the people in power chose to build. Today the top 1% pay 48% of NYC's personal income taxes. That's enough concentration to keep any politician scared.

2/6 Over decades, New York was remade into a profit center for finance, luxury real estate, and high-end services. That left public housing starved. Hospitals squeezed. Universities cut. Transit left to decay.

🧵 1/6 Hochul still won't tax the wealthy because she's worried they'll leave. So we govern a city of 8 million based on the feelings of a few thousand. Here's how we got here:

3/ Every state and city should run the numbers: Trump’s cruel immigration policies don’t just harm people—they shrink the tax base and push costs onto working families. We must protect immigrants, ensure safe filing + raise progressive revenue from concentrated wealth.

Op-Ed | ICE is coming for our people and our budget | amNewYork New York faces a projected $34.3 billion cumulative budget gap through 2029, and federal funding, nearly 39% of the state budget, is shrinking. Every dollar

2/ Cato estimates immigrants reduced deficits by ~$14.5T over 1994–2023 (in real 2024$). So IRS/ICE data-sharing, employment raids, fear campaigns, and violent deportation tactics push people into the shadows and reduce tax filing. I wrote about this for NY last week, and now Cato confirms it:

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023 Our analysis in this paper shows that immigrants generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023, that the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American,...

🧵 1/ New Cato white paper (yes, Cato) finds immigrants paid more in taxes than they received in benefits every year from 1994–2023 across federal, state, and local budgets:

Op-Ed | ICE is coming for our people and our budget – amNewYork New York faces a projected $34.3 billion cumulative budget gap through 2029, and federal funding, nearly 39% of the state budget, is shrinking. Every dollar

@mayor.nyc.gov @governor.ny.gov NYC faces a $12B budget hole for FY26-27. Undocumented NYers contribute ~$3.1B/yr in NY state & local taxes. Trump’s cruel ICE tactics will shrink revenue by pushing immigrants into the shadows & off the books. We must #TaxTheRich now to pay their share. My op-ed:

“The Homeland” Is War on America: The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti In the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact: The culture war is an actual war.

ta-nehisi on renee good, alex pretti, and the "culture war"

Thrilled to join Roosevelt Institute’s 2026 Think Tank Fellows cohort to help build an economy that delivers shared prosperity, real power for working people, and rules that rein in extraction. Very excited to be alongside my former Treasury colleagues Chastity Murphy and @samarthgupta.bsky.social!

Crypto won’t fix America’s affordability crisis An economy that already feels precarious does not need more ways for households to absorb financial risk

Congress is fast-tracking crypto — not fixing the real economy.

New op-ed in Fast Company: www.fastcompany.com/91474218/cry...

Great work from @groundwork.bsky.social. what it immediately brings to mind is whether a SNAP card on an instacart account impacts prices shown and if so how

Opinion | ‘Trump accounts’ will save kids? Republicans can’t be serious. Baby bonds are a wealth-building tool that’s inclusive, equitable and grounded in solid economics.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | The case for taxing billionaires is older than you think A wealth tax, with a top rate of 100%, is common sense.

A good idea whose time has come

www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

‘Sold POTUS a bill of goods’: WH furious with Pulte over 50-year mortgage The White House was blindsided by the idea and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked Trump into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

The White House was blindsided by the idea and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

9/ Homeownership should be a path out of precarity where each payment turns rent to the bank into equity. A 50-year mortgage does the opposite. It converts owners into long-term renters to the bank while doing nothing to fix scarcity, wages, or the structures that lock people out in the first place.

8/ Non-QM loans often advertise a headline rate that fades once the full terms appear. Higher pricing, fewer protections, slower amortization. The small apparent savings today is overwhelmed by lifetime interest most families do not anticipate.

7/ First-time buyers are older than ever, hovering around forty. If you buy at forty with a fifty-year mortgage the last payment arrives near ninety. For Black and Latino households that already enter homeownership later because of systemic barriers, this widens the wealth gap rather than closing it

6/ Many working families also carry PMI in the early years. Slower principal reduction keeps PMI around longer while interest keeps piling up. The lower payment looks friendly today but not tomorrow.

Line chart, equity built in first 10 years on $400k at 6%. 30-year ≈ $65k vs 50-year ≈ $17k, showing much slower equity for 50-year.

5/ Homeownership should build economic security through equity. After 10 years:
30-year ≈ $65.3k principal paid
50-year ≈ $17.3k principal paid
That moves wealth building to a crawl.

4/ On $400,000 at 6% (principal and interest only):
30-year ≈ $2,398/mo, total interest ≈ $463k
50-year ≈ $2,106/mo, total interest ≈ $863k
You “save” ≈ $293/mo and pay ≈ $400k more over the life of the mortgage to the bank for the privilege of a smaller monthly bill.

3/ Our housing crisis is not a payment puzzle. It is a shortage. We have not built enough homes, and financial speculation has kept prices high. Stretching a loan to fifty years does not create a single new unit; it just lengthens the leash so lenders collect more over a longer horizon.

2/ Under Dodd-Frank’s Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage rules, the consumer-protected lane tops out at 30 years. That cap exists because long / exotic terms (i.e. maybe predatory) shifted volatility onto families. A 50-year loan lives in non-QM, with thinner safeguards and often worse pricing.

🧵 1/ I keep getting asked about 50-year mortgages. I worked in banking/housing finance after the 2008 crash, and what I see is a policy that markets relief while loading risk onto the very households it claims to help. Affordability comes from more homes and higher incomes, not longer debt.

We’re hiring!

Our new resume portal is live, and we’re looking for top talent in NYC to help build this administration and deliver on our affordability agenda.

Could that be you? Apply using the link below.
transition2025.com/apply

The Affordability Framework - Economic Security Project This report introduces a two-part framework, identifying 1) broken markets and 2) broken incomes as dual drivers of the affordability crisis. This framework assesses the forces driving up costs for Am...

Today @economicsecurityproject.org released its Affordability Framework by Becky Chao and myself.

As affordability remains central to economic debates, it's helpful to step back to see the key drivers of the crisis and build a theory of the case. /1 economicsecurityproject.org/resource/aff...

How I Became a Populist My time at the Federal Trade Commission—before Donald Trump fired me—totally changed the way I see our political divide.

If you read anything today, read this piece by @bedoyausa.bsky.social. It’s a sharp reminder that the real political stakes aren’t just left vs. right. They are about power vs. the people and who gets to control our economy and our lives. For immigrants, in housing, in labor, in tech, and beyond.