Business Taxes and Costs A Cross-State Comparison

Abstract

The study focuses on ten states. We begin by looking at Kansas and the nearby states of Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. We then turn our consideration to several large industrial states: California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. We compare basic tax rates, tax incentives, and business costs for these states in Chapters 1-8 of the report. In Chapter 9, we examine the results from a model that simulates the taxes and costs that would be faced by .representative firms on a state­-by-state basis. We also include four appendices that address special issues in state and local finance: fees and regulations, tax elasticity, tax incidence, and the effect of taxes on growth.