ICT wins journalism award for taxation collaboration

ICT and news partner examined state tax encroachment onto tribal lands

Author:
ICT Staff
Publish date:
Mar 13, 2023

Teresa Rutherford, Osage Nation, shown here on Nov. 13, 2022, is building her dream home on her family’s original allotment lands on the Osage Reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. Getting a tax exemption from the state of Oklahoma for sales and use tax on the construction has proved challenging. (Photo by Shannon Shaw Duty for the Center for Public Integrity and ICT)

ICT and news partner examined state tax encroachment onto tribal lands

ICT Staff

ICT has won a top business journalism award for an investigative report on tax inequities that was produced in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity.

The series, “Unequal Burden,” won its division in the explanatory category in the Best in Business Awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, or SABEW.

Judges said the “breadth of reporting was impressive.”

Read more:
—Tribes need tax revenue. States keep taking it.
—How state taxes make inequality worse
—How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality

Among the writers cited for the award were ICT national correspondent Joaqlin Estus and Osage News editor Shannon Shaw Duty, along with James B. Steele of Bloomberg Tax and Public Integrity reporters Maya Srikrishnan, Melissa Hellmann, Ashley Clarke and Joe Yerardi.

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A Census Bureau plan to move up the deadline to end “enumeration,” the process of counting U.S. residents, from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30 was put on hold by a federal judge. Critics, including the Navajo and Gila River tribes, had sued to block the move, which they said would lead to an undercount, particularly for minority communities. (Photo courtesy U.S. Census Bureau)

While the boys work with the horses, Dr. John Spence, an elder and consultant to NARA NW, tells them, “You’re getting in tune with another spirit.” (Elyse Wild/Native News Online)

The story that was produced in partnership with ICT showed how states undercut tribes by taxing activities on tribal lands.

“There’s always problems with taxation and the state,” said an Oklahoma woman who is fighting the state to build a dream home for herself and her daughters. “The state just cannot accept us as a sovereign nation.”

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The series published by the Center for Public Integrity also included stories showing how states extract a greater share of poor residents’ income than wealthier people’s (and how avowed white supremacists set that in motion) and how four decades of federal tax cuts help explain spiraling inequality, which was written by Steele in partnership with Bloomberg Tax.

Judges selected winners from what SABEW described as a record 1,182 entries submitted by 193 news organizations.

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