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Journal Article
Fiscal condition of the New England states
Journal Article
Should Massachusetts reform its bank tax?
Journal Article
Interstate fiscal disparity in 1997
Readily available tax statistics tell state and local policymakers the amount and mix of revenues that their governments receive. However, these officials pose harder fiscal questions than simply how much money is flowing into their coffers and from what sources. They frequently ask, What is our state's capacity to raise revenues, regardless of how much we actually collect? To what extent do we utilize that capacity? Is our revenue capacity sufficient to finance our state's need for public services? These questions are especially salient today, given that during state fiscal year 2002 ...
Journal Article
State response in New England to federal tax reform
Journal Article
Unemployment insurance policy in New England: background and issues
Almost two-thirds of the states, and all the New England states except New Hampshire, have exhausted their unemployment insurance trust fund and borrowed from the federal government at least once during the past 35 years. Under such circumstances, states are required by law to raise unemployment insurance taxes in order to replenish their trust funds and to pay off their debts to the federal government. Since higher unemployment insurance taxes increase employer costs, replenishment forces states into a trade-off between economic competitiveness and trust fund adequacy. In recent years, ...
Journal Article
Are state and local revenue systems becoming obsolete?
As recently as a year ago, state governments were awash in revenue, but reports from state revenue officials suggest that growth in tax receipts has slowed considerably in recent quarters. The flow of tax revenues into state coffers has decelerated primarily because the economy has suffered a severe shock (it was weakening even before September 11) and delayed tax cuts enacted in earlier, more prosperous times have taken full effect. However, many tax analysts believe that long-term economic, technological, and political trends are also partially responsible and will continue to constrain ...
Journal Article
Massachusetts' tax competitiveness
One of the most important issues facing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts today is maintaining a hospitable climate for business. If Massachusetts' taxes are deterring firms from locating and expanding within its territory, then the Commonwealth should consider ways of making its tax system less repellent. On the other hand, if its tax system is not such a deterrent, the Commonwealth should devote more attention to issues of greater concern to its employers, such as high unemployment insurance taxes, workers' compensation premiums, health care costs, and energy prices. ; This article presents ...
Working Paper
Measuring fiscal disparities across the U. S. states: a representative revenue system/representative expenditure system approach, fiscal year 2002
States and their local governments vary both in their needs to provide basic public services and in their abilities to raise revenues to pay for those services. A joint study by the Tax Policy Center and the New England Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston uses the Representative Revenue System (RRS) and the Representative Expenditure System (RES) frameworks to quantify these disparities across states by comparing each state?s revenue capacity, revenue effort, and necessary expenditures to the average capacity, effort, and need in states across the country for fiscal year 2002. ...
Working Paper
The subsidy from state and local tax deductibility: trends, methodological issues, and its value after federal tax reform
Even though the momentum of the "devolution" movement has slowed, federal intergovernmental grants will probably be cut substantially during the next five to ten years. Federal tax reform could further erode federal assistance by eliminating the deduction for state and local personal income and property taxes. This deduction subsidizes the net cost to taxpayers of financing an additional dollar of state and local spending. In the language of economics, deductibility reduces the marginal "tax price" of state and local public goods. This paper clarifies methodological issues in the ...