Governments at all levels – federal, state and local – are suffering through ever more severe budget crises. The interests of these different levels of government are often assumed to be in conflict. For instance, it seems reasonable to believe that if the federal government were to get its...

The 2017 tax legislation brought sweeping changes to the rules for taxing individuals and business, the deductibility of state and local taxes, and the international tax regime. The complex legislation was drafted and passed through a rushed and secretive process intended to limit public comment...

A centerpiece of the 2017 federal tax legislation's reforms to international corporate income tax rules is the new global intangible low-taxed income regime (or GILTI). In a prior essay, we argued that U.S. state governments should conform to GILTI. But might there be constitutional restrictions...

This report describes various tax games, roadblocks, and glitches in the tax legislation currently before Congress, titled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The complex rules proposed in the House and Senate bills will allow new tax games and planning opportunities for well-advised taxpayers,...

States and localities offer businesses an enormous amount of tax incentives to locate within their jurisdictions despite: 1) the mass of evidence that suggests that these incentives are not particularly effective and, 2) substantial doubts about their constitutionality. In this essay, we develop...

The literature on the question of how best to distribute the burden of taxation is technical and vast. However, in order for there to be a tax burden to distribute, there must first be a relatively stable social order that establishes, among other things, property rights. But the establishing of...