In a sample of over 27 million establishments of U.S. firms with activities in more than one state, we estimate the impact of state business taxation on business activity. Only firms organized as subchapter C corporations are subject to the corporate tax code, whereas the income of partnerships,...

Puerto Rico operated as a tax haven under U.S. Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 936. Firms in the pharmaceutical industry accounted for approximately 50% of tax credits awarded and 20% of employment under the program. The U.S. Congress eliminated the tax exemption program in 2006, creating a...

This paper examines the effect of taxation on foreign investment and on business location within the United States. The idea is to compare the inter-state distribution of investments from certain foreign countries (those with foreign tax credit systems) with the distribution of investments from...

We study state taxes as a potential source of spatial misallocation in the United States. We build a spatial general equilibrium framework that incorporates salient features of the U.S. state tax system, and use changes in state tax rates between 1980 and 2010 to estimate the model parameters...

This essay describes and evaluates state and local business tax incentives in the United States. In 2014, states spent between $5 and $216 per capita on incentives for firms in the form of firm-specific subsidies and general tax credits, which mostly target investment, job creation, and research...

There has been a pronounced change in the formulas states use to apportion the income of multistate corporations from one that placed equal weight on payroll, profits, and sales to one that places at least half the weight on sales, and eight base apportionment solely on sales. This paper, which...

This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject of taxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation -- notably, raising revenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities -- and the mapping between these functions and various...

We collect detailed data on U.S. state personal income, corporate, sales, cigarette, gasoline, and alcohol taxes over the past 70 years to shed light on the determinants of state tax policies. We provide a comprehensive summary of how tax policy has changed over time, within and across states....

California has the highest Earned Income Tax (EITC) supplement to the federal EITC, with an 85% supplement rate. However, we find that despite the apparent generosity of the California EITC, there is no employment effect on less-skilled single mothers, in sharp contrast to the evidence of...

Empirical research in public economics, including our own, often uses variation in state and local taxes as an empirical laboratory to estimate causal relationships. A key concern is that other taxes might change at the same time. To assess this concern, we develop a dataset of state (1977-2022)...