State Taxation of Business: Issues and Policy Options

This text is a treatment of state-level business tax issues. It addresses three broad questions: how should businesses be taxed?; how does present practice compare with and depart from this prescription? and how can present practice be improved? The contributors to the volume analyse these issues from a variety of perspectives, presenting a cross section of current thinking about states’ business tax policies. The work provides a conceptual framework for defining business taxes, measuring their levels and consequences, comparing interstate differences in business tax practices, and evaluating alternative business tax policies. It presents data showing current levels, trends, and interstate differences in business taxation, and it examines the political and economic rationales for taxing business and the implications of those rationales for tax policy. This analysis should be of interest to scholars and practitioners in taxation, public economics, and business finance.