Working Paper

Economic effects of apportionment formula changes : results from a panel of corporate income tax returns

Abstract: To date empirical studies of the economic effects of changes in state corporate income tax apportionment policies have used only highly aggregated, state-level data. This study uses data at the individual firm level, which is provided by a population of corporate income tax returns from the State of Georgia over the period 1992 2002, to evaluate the economic development and revenue aspects of increasing the sales factor weight (and uniformly lowering the weights on payroll and property) in state corporate income tax apportionment formulas. Looking at the firm level, we find elasticities sufficiently large to lead to substantial impact on local sales ( - 6.5 percent), payroll (2.0 percent) and property (2.1 percent) following a move to double-weighted sales. For the average firm, increases in Georgia payroll and property were $37,110 and $190,829, respectively, while the decrease in Georgia sales for the average firm was $634,367. Based on 1994 figures (the year prior to double-weighting), this amounts to state-wide increases in payroll and property of $0.6 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively, and a decrease in gross receipts of approximately $10.4 billion.

Keywords: Corporations - Taxation; Corporations - Taxation - Georgia;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Part of Series: Community Affairs Research Working Paper

Publication Date: 2004

Number: 2005-03