State and Local Tax Policy Issues

Funding and investing in infrastructure are not only about finding adequate resources to meet the demands of citizenry, but rather requires understanding of how infrastructure fits into the broader functions of government. This brief examines the key role of pricing infrastructure projects and how the total cost of a project (including lifetime maintenance costs) should be included in funding decisions. Current federal and state policies often encourage new building rather than maintenance and care of existing infrastructure. The role of public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects is also sometimes more about political rather than economic considerations. The author presents options to better coordinate infrastructure financing and payments across levels of government.

The charitable property tax exemption can have significant revenue implications for municipalities with large nonprofit sectors and heavy reliance on the property tax. Interest in policies to offset these revenue implications has grown because of the growth of the nonprofit sector in recent decades and the fiscal crisis currently facing many local governments. This policy brief discusses some of these policies, including nonprofit payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs), municipal service fees, heavier reliance on user fees and special assessments, in-kind contributions from nonprofits, state aid to municipalities hosting tax-exempt nonprofits, and local control over the charitable property tax exemption.

This issue brief examines the unprecedented funding problem of state unemployment insurance (UI) programs. The majority of UI programs (36 of 53) have borrowed, securing record loan amounts to maintain unemployment insurance benefit payments during 2009-2011. It identifies the causes of the funding problem, discusses borrowing options for states and describes policy responses at both the state and federal levels. State actions have included both tax increases and benefit reductions. Federal policy proposals have addressed the low UI taxable wage base in most states and have offered partial debt forgiveness in return for state actions to improve solvency. To date, policy actions have been slow at both the state and federal levels of government.

State tax systems are in trouble. Revenue collecting methods developed more than a half century ago are straining to deal with 21st century economies. Globalization and e-commerce are changing the way people work and purchase goods; devolution has steadily shifted responsibility from the federal government to the states; tax incentives have become the weapon of choice in the battle to attract business investment. All of this, in an environment where antitax messages have become a staple of political campaigns, have made creating tax policy more challenging than ever before. In the updated third edition of State Tax Policy: A Political Perspective, David Brunori analyzes these and other critical challenges facing state governments. He identifies the important issues, and examines possible solutions in formulating and implementing state tax policy.

The current economic downturn has resulted in a sharp decline in state tax revenues. Forty-six states faced budget shortfalls when passing their fiscal year (FY) 2011 budgets, and 17 states reported shortfalls of more than 20 percent. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, in tandem with budget cuts, 40 states enacted legislation to raise tax revenues in some form between fiscal years 2009 and 2011.

The U.S. faces a large medium-term federal budget deficit and an unsustainable long-term fiscal gap. Left unattended, these shortfalls will hobble and eventually cripple the economy. The only plausible way to close the gap is through a combination of spending cuts and/or tax increases. This paper discusses why a federal Value Added Tax (VAT) should be part of a constructive solution to the fiscal problem.

The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010 ("Wyden-Gregg," introduced as S. 3018) is a broad reform of the federal income tax system. Some provisions would also expand the Social Security payroll tax base. This paper presents the Tax Policy Center's estimates of the revenue and distributional effects of the income and payroll tax provisions in Wyden-Gregg.