Dynamic Sales Tax Competition

Dynamic Sales Tax Competition
Author: Melissa Gentry
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

We examine both vertical and horizontal tax competition over time by studying the strategic response of county sales taxation to state sales taxes and to cross-border neighboring municipalities' combined (state and county) taxes. Using county and state sales tax data from 2003 through 2009, we employ both static and dynamic panel analysis as well as an instrumental variables approach in combination with a border analysis. Our results confirm the presence of tax competition in the cross section, as previous studies have found. Results from the fixedeffects and dynamic panel analysis also indicate the presence of vertical competition, though quite small, as counties are consistently responsive to changes in their own state sales tax level across all models and specifications. However, the panel findings suggest little to no horizontal tax competition. Following Parchet (2019), we address additional concerns about endogeneity by instrumenting the neighboring-county sales tax rate with the state-level sales tax rate of the neighboring state. Results from instrumental variables analysis reinforce the presence of a small vertical tax competition between local and state sales tax policies. Interestingly, our results, like those of Parchet (2019), indicate that cross-border local sales tax rates act as strategic substitutes.

Catching Capital

Catching Capital
Author: Peter Dietsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190251522

Rich people stash away trillions of dollars in tax havens like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, or Singapore. Multinational corporations shift their profits to low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland or Panama to avoid paying tax. Recent stories in the media about Apple, Google, Starbucks, and Fiat are just the tip of the iceberg. There is hardly any multinational today that respects not just the letter but also the spirit of tax laws. All this becomes possible due to tax competition, with countries strategically designing fiscal policy to attract capital from abroad. The loopholes in national tax regimes that tax competition generates and exploits draw into question political economic life as we presently know it. They undermine the fiscal autonomy of political communities and contribute to rising inequalities in income and wealth. Building on a careful analysis of the ethical challenges raised by a world of tax competition, this book puts forward a normative and institutional framework to regulate the practice. In short, individuals and corporations should pay tax in the jurisdictions of which they are members, where this membership can come in degrees. Moreover, the strategic tax setting of states should be limited in important ways. An International Tax Organisation (ITO) should be created to enforce the principles of tax justice. The author defends this call for reform against two important objections. First, Dietsch refutes the suggestion that regulating tax competition is inefficient. Second, he argues that regulation of this sort, rather than representing a constraint on national sovereignty, in fact turns out to be a requirement of sovereignty in a global economy. The book closes with a series of reflections on the obligations that the beneficiaries of tax competition have towards the losers both prior to any institutional reform as well as in its aftermath.

Sell Globally, Tax Locally

Sell Globally, Tax Locally
Author: Michael S. Greve
Publisher: American Enterprise Institute
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780844771700

This book discusses the flaws of destination-based taxation and makes the theoretical case for origin-based taxation.

Lost in America

Lost in America
Author: David R. Agrawal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper studies comprehensive national panel data of local option sales taxes at the monthly frequency. I calculate state-by-month population weighted averages of local sales tax rates. I document ten stylized facts concerning the time series patterns and spatial dynamics of local sales taxes. The paper then considers a "tax system" approach to tax competition where states compete on a variety of margins that are often ignored by the standard focus on tax rates. Using the state-by-month averages, I find a significant association between one state's tax system and its neighboring states' tax systems.

Sales Tax Competition

Sales Tax Competition
Author: Nicholas Alan Saxon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2013
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN:

The exhaustive existing literature on sales tax competition has had a focus on state data or case-studies of specific areas. This is natural because these data are usually easily obtained, and the concept of a national panel of sales tax rate data below a state level has been out of reach thus far. This paper attempts to further the literature by bringing this focus on sales taxes down to county level business data and adds county sales tax rates to the already intensely-covered state sales tax rate. Further, this paper covers all counties within the United States in order to provide better insight into the use and growth of the sales tax at sub-national levels. Utilizing data from 2002 through 2011, it is found that sales taxes have a significant negative impact to an overall county economy's annual payroll and employment. This is in stark contrast to the positive gains policymakers achieve for society by raising revenue to provide services by raising sales tax rates, and the trade-off may suggest raising sales tax rates is not beneficial overall, and may do much more harm than good. Further, it is confirmed that sales taxes tend to indicate a "friendliness" to the retail industry and a neglect of the manufacturing industry, whereby the institution of, or an increase in, a state or county sales tax rate can significantly reduce the manufacturing business activity within that county.

Wayfair

Wayfair
Author: Donald Bruce
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark 2018 Wayfair case greatly improved state governments' ability to enforce collection of sales taxes on a destination basis. This has reduced state tax competition with an essentially-untaxed internet, but has brought traditional cross-border shopping, which is often subject to origin taxation, back to prominence among policy makers and researchers. We provide a detailed discussion of state and local sales tax features and the extent to which they have fostered sales tax competition in recent decades. We then explore the extent to which greater destination taxation has influenced the location of (a) consumer purchases and (b) business locations using two different empirical approaches. First, we analyze county-level data for Tennessee and select surrounding states to provide suggestive evidence that sales tax collections have grown more in rural Tennessee counties and less in Tennessee border counties since Wayfair. Additionally, we show that collections have grown more since Wayfair in North Carolina counties along the Tennessee border, where the tax rate differential is on the order of 3.3 percentage points. Second, we examine state-level data to show that business applications have grown at much faster rates after Wayfair in states with the highest sales tax rates. We attribute this to the removal of the significant disincentive to establish sales tax nexus that dominated the pre-Wayfair environment.

Inter-Federation Competition

Inter-Federation Competition
Author: David R. Agrawal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

Local sales tax rates influence the location of retail activity. This paper develops a theory and empirical identification strategy for studying sales tax competition with “multiple federations,” as exemplified by multiple counties each containing several cities. In addition to strategic interactions with nearby cities and a city's own county, city tax rates are influenced by the tax rates of neighboring counties. Cities react heterogeneously to own-county sales tax rates depending on distance to the county border. Using data on the driving time to county borders and a comprehensive cross-section of local sales tax rates, I exploit variation in proximity to county borders to identify vertical fiscal competition. Cities located near county borders react more intensely to their county's tax rate in comparison to towns at the interior. An increase in the neighboring county tax rate raises city tax rates in nearby counties.