The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the state or local tax implications of civil RICO in Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Co., 547 U.S. 451 (2006), Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U.S. 639 (2008), and Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New York, 130 S. Ct. 983 (2010). In Anza and Hemi, the civil...

I compute the lifetime tax incidence of the major state and local taxes used in the United States during the 1980s. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, I show that over the life cycle, general sales taxes are progressive and equally as progressive as state and local income taxes....

Previous installments of this column have examined numerous canons or conventions of statutory interpretation in their application to state and local tax controversies. This installment considers another canon: the precept that courts should prefer interpretations that render no part of a...

Borders create a discontinuous tax treatment of retail sales. In a Nash game, equilibrium local tax rates will be higher on the low-tax side of a border. Taxes will decrease from the nearest high-tax border and increase from the nearest low-tax border. Using driving time from state borders and...

The pro-taxpayer canon is one of the oldest interpretational devices in tax litigation. It has been substantially abandoned at the federal level, but retains considerable vigor in cases involving state and local taxes. Although the canon applies only to ambiguous tax statutes and may yield to...

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...

Federal deductibility for state and local taxes constitutes one of the largest tax expenditures in the federal budget and provides a significant source of federal support to state and local governments. Deductibility was restricted in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 by removing the deduction for...

There has been an increasing reliance on sales taxation in both the states and counties in the United States. In this paper, we are examining the relationship between state and local sales taxation and business activity in the U.S. by utilizing county-level data for the period 2002-2011.We have...

Many states use a formula consisting of the relative in-state sales, payroll, and property to apportion income of a multistate taxpayer. States can change the apportionment formula by modifying the weight assigned to these factors. By using a throw-out rule, states may adjust the sales factor by...

State borders create a discontinuous tax treatment of retail sales. In a Nash game, local tax rates will be higher on the low-state-tax side of a border. Local taxes will decrease from the nearest high-tax border and increase from the low-tax border. Using driving time from state borders and all...