Good Jobs First (GJF) has a new in-depth report revealing how the most aggressively promoted and publicized measures of states’ “business climates” are nothing more than messaging tools “designed to promote a particular political agenda.”  According to the study’s co-author, PhD economist Peter Fisher, “When we scrutinized the business climate methodologies, we found profound and elementary errors. We found effects presented as causes. We found factors that have no empirically proven relationship to economic growth. And we found scores that ignore major differences among state tax systems.” Yet too often, such rankings are reported uncritically in the media and – worse – cited by lawmakers seeking to change policy. Of course, this is precisely the goal of the corporate-backed, ideologically driven organizations generating these simplistic reports.

Looking at indexes from the Tax Foundation, ALEC and other anti-tax groups, GJF finds that “the one consistent theme that the indexes harp on is regressive taxation, especially lower corporate income taxes, lower or flat or nonexistent personal income taxes, and no estate or inheritance taxes.”  While the biggest problem is that none of the indexes show any actual economic benefits from their policy prescriptions, GJF also spotlights a slew of methodological problems that in some cases border on comical:

The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index is compiled by “stirring together no less than 118 features of the tax law and producing out of that stew a single, arbitrary index number.” Since the Tax Foundation index gets sidetracked into trivial issues like the number of income tax brackets and the tax rate on beer, it should come as little surprise that their ranking bears no resemblance to more careful measures of the actual level of taxes paid by businesses in each state. GJF concludes that “it is hard to imagine how the [Tax Foundation] could do much worse in terms of measuring the actual amount of taxes businesses pay in one state versus another.”

The index contained in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Rich States, Poor States report fails an even more fundamental test. After running a series of statistical models to examine how states that have enacted ALEC’s preferred policies have fared, GJF concludes that the index “fails to predict job creation, GDP growth, state and local revenue growth, or rising personal incomes.”

The Beacon Hill Institute’s State Competitiveness Report misses the purpose of these indexes entirely by assuming that things like the creation of new businesses and the existence of state government budget surpluses somehow cause economic growth—rather than being direct result of it. 

Finally, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council’s (SBEC) U.S. Business Policy Index has a somewhat more narrow focus: grading states based on policies that the SBEC thinks are important to entrepreneurship and small business development.  But GJF explains that “the authors apparently believe that there are in fact no government programs or policies that are supportable … State spending on infrastructure, the quality of the education system, small business development centers or entrepreneurship programs at public universities, technology transfer or business extension programs, business-university partnerships, small business incubators, state venture capital funding—none of these public activities is included in the [index].”  Unsurprisingly, then, GJF also finds that a state’s ranking on the SBEC index has no relation with how well it actually does in terms of variables like the prevalence of business startups and existence of fast-growing firms.

But while each index has its own problems, GJF also points out that when it comes to tax policy, there’s a much more fundamental flaw with what these organizations have tried to do:

State and local taxes are a very small share of business costs—less than two percent … State and local governments have a great deal of power to affect the other 98+ percent of companies’ cost structures, particularly in the education and skill levels of the workforce, the efficiency of infrastructure, and the quality of public services generally. … The business tax rankings examined here … are worse than meaningless – they distract policy makers from the most important responsibilities of the public sector and help to undermine the long run foundations of state economic growth and prosperity.

Read the report

Lawmakers looking for an excuse to cut their personal income taxes regularly claim that doing so will trigger an economic boom.  To support this claim, many cite an analysis by supply-side economist Arthur Laffer that our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), exposes as deeply flawed.

In States with “High Rate” Income Taxes are Still Outperforming No-Tax States, ITEP explains that Laffer uses cherry-picked data and simplistic comparisons to claim that the nine states without income taxes are outperforming states with “high rate” income taxes.  He goes on to suggest that the alleged success of those no-tax states can be easily replicated in any state that simply repeals its own personal income tax.

But ITEP shows that residents living in states with income taxes—including those in states with the highest top tax rates—are experiencing economic conditions as good, if not better, than in the no-tax states.  In fact, the states with the highest top income tax rates have seen more economic growth per capita and less decline in their median income level than the nine states that do not tax income.  Unemployment rates have been nearly identical across states with and without income taxes. 

As ITEP explains, Laffer’s supply-side claims rely on blunt, aggregate measures of economic growth that are closely linked to population changes, and the unsupported assertion that tax policy is a leading force behind those changes. Laffer chooses to omit measures like median income growth and state unemployment rates in his comparisons of states with and without income taxes, even as he cites these very same measures in his other studies, when the story they tell fits his preferred narrative.

Even more fundamentally, Laffer’s work falls far short of academic standards in that it completely excludes non-tax factors that impact state growth, including variables like natural resources and federal military spending (variables that Laffer himself has admitted to be important).  In the text of his reports, Laffer concedes that “the drivers of economic growth are many faceted.”  And yet when he constructs analyses designed to show the harm of state income taxes, somehow every non-tax “facet” happens to get left out.  Of course, more careful academic studies often conclude that income tax cuts have little, if any, impact on state economic growth.

Read ITEP’s report.

Front Page Photo of Arthur Laffer and Rick Perry via Texas Governor Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Note to Readers: This is the second of a six part series on tax reform in the states.  Over the coming weeks, The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) will highlight tax reform proposals and look at the policy trends  that are gaining momentum in states across the country. This post focuses on “tax swap” proposals.

The most extreme and potentially devastating tax reform proposals under consideration in a number of states are those that would reduce or eliminate one or more taxes and replace some or all of the lost revenue by expanding or increasing another tax.  We call such proposals “tax swaps.”  Lawmakers in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina have already put forth such proposals and it is likely that Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio and Virginia will join the list.

Most commonly, tax swaps shift a state’s reliance away from a progressive personal income tax to a regressive sales tax. The proposals in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina, for example, would entirely eliminate the personal and corporate income taxes and replace the lost revenue with a higher sales tax rate and an expanded sales tax base that would include services and other previously exempted items such as food.   

In the end, tax swap proposals hike taxes on the majority of taxpayers, especially low- and moderate-income families and give significant tax cuts to wealthy families and profitable corporations. For instance, according to an ITEP analysis of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s tax swap plan (eliminating the personal income tax and replacing the lost revenue through increased sales taxes) found that the bottom 80 percent of Louisianans would see their taxes increase. In fact, the poorest 20 percent of Louisianans, those with an average annual income of just $12,000, would see an average tax increase of $395, or 3.4 percent of their income. At the same time, the elimination of the income tax would mean a tax cut for Louisiana’s wealthiest, especially in the top 5 percent.  ITEP concluded that any low income tax credit designed to offset the hit Louisiana’s low income families would take would be so expensive that the whole plan could not come out “revenue neutral.” The income tax is that important a revenue source.

These proposals also threaten a state’s ability to provide essential services, now and over time. They start out with a goal of being revenue neutral, meaning that the state would raise close to the same amount under the new tax structure as it did from the old.  But, even if the intent is to make up lost revenue from cutting or eliminating one tax, these plans are at risk of losing substantial amounts of revenue due in large part to the political difficulty of raising any other taxes to pay for the cuts. Frankly, it’s taxpayers with the weakest voice in state capitals who end up shouldering the brunt of these tax hikes: low and middle income families.

Proponents of tax swap proposals claim that replacing income taxes with a broader and higher sales tax will make their state tax codes fairer, simpler and better positioned for economic growth, but the evidence is simply not on their side. ITEP has done a series of reports debunking these economic growth, supply-side myths. In fact, ITEP found (PDF) that residents of so-called “high tax” states are actually experiencing economic conditions as good and better than those living in states lacking a personal income tax. There is no reason for states to expect that reducing or repealing their income taxes will improve the performance of their economies; there is every reason to expect it will ultimately hobble consumer spending and economic activity.

Here’s a brief review of some of the tax swap proposals under consideration:

Last week Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman revealed two plans to eliminate or greatly reduce the state’s income taxes and replace the lost revenue by ending a wide variety of sales tax exemptions. ITEP will conduct a full analysis of both of his plans, though it’s likely that increasing dependence on regressive sales taxes while reducing or eliminating progressive income taxes will result in a tax structure that is more unfair overall.

If Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has his way he’ll pay for cutting personal income tax rates by eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and raising sales taxes. An ITEP analysis will be released soon showing the impact of these changes – made even more destructive because of the radical tax reductions Governor Brownback signed into law last year.

Details recently emerged about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s plan to eliminate nearly $3 billion in personal and corporate income taxes and replace the lost revenue with higher sales taxes. ITEP ran an analysis to determine just how that tax change would affect all Louisianans. ITEP found that the bottom 80 percent of Louisianans in the income distribution would see a tax increase. The middle 20 percent, those with an average income of $43,000, would see an average tax increase of $534, or 1.2 percent of their income. The largest beneficiaries of the tax proposal would be the top one percent, with an average income of well over $1 million, who'd see an average tax cut of $25,423. You can read the two-page analysis here.

North Carolina lawmakers are considering a proposal that would eliminate the state’s personal and corporate income taxes and replace the lost revenues with a broader and higher sales tax, a new business license fee, and a real estate transfer tax. The North Carolina Budget and Tax Center just released this report (using ITEP data) showing that the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would experience a tax hike under the proposal. In fact, “[a] family earning $24,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $500, while one earning $1 million would get a $41,000 break.” The News and Observer gets it right when they opine that the “proposed changes in North Carolina and elsewhere are based in part on recommendations from the Laffer Center for Supply Side Economics.  Supply-side economics (or “voodoo economics,” as former President George H.W. Bush once called it) didn’t work for the United States…. We wonder why such misguided notions endure and fear where they might take North Carolina.”

Note to Readers: This is the first of a six part series on tax reform in the states.  Over the coming weeks, CTJ’s partner organization, The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) will highlight tax reform proposals and look at the policy trends that are gaining momentum in states across the country.

Following an election that left half the states with veto-proof legislative majorities, 37 states with one-party rule and more than a dozen with governors who put tax reform high on their agendas, 2013 promises to be a big year for changes to state tax laws.

The scrutiny lawmakers will be giving to their state and local tax systems presents an extraordinary opportunity to assess and address structural flaws and ensure that states have the necessary revenue to provide vital public services now and in the future. Yet, it is already clear that “tax reform” for some state lawmakers may be little more than a vehicle for ideological goals like shrinking government spending or cutting taxes for profitable corporations and the wealthy.

Lawmakers in more than 30 states will take on taxes in some shape or form this year – at least 15 states are expected to consider a major tax overhaul (CA, IA, KS, KY, LA, MN, MO, NC, NE, NY, OH, OK, OR, VA, WI) and the list seems to grow by the week.

In the past week, Governors’ proposals in Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin have been taking shape and what we are seeing is not pretty. Tax cutting and wholesale elimination of the progressive personal income tax is high on these governors’ agendas, and North Carolina is likely to be the next state to join this list.

As a historic number of states gear up for major tax changes, we know that Grover Norquist, Arthur Laffer, and other anti-tax advocates will be making their case for less taxes, smaller government and a higher reliance on the sales tax.  There needs to be a real policy discussion in the states that helps people understand there’s a smart way to do tax reform, that it can’t just mean cuts or eliminating revenue sources, and that reform has wide ranging, long term consequences.

Enter the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), CTJ's partner organization. ITEP is closely monitoring tax reform proposals as they develop and will run them through the microsimulation model to see how proposed changes get distributed across different groups of taxpayers – who benefits and who doesn’t and by how much.

ITEP has identified several emerging trends and this series will examine and explain these five major kinds of proposals anticipated this year:

1) Proposals that would sharply reduce or eliminate one or more taxes and replace some or all of the lost revenue by expanding or increasing another tax (“Tax Swaps”)

2) Proposals that would significantly reduce the personal income tax paid by individuals or businesses

3) Proposals to revamp gas taxes

4) Real tax reform- proposals that fix tax codes’ structural flaws rather than dismantling or eliminating taxes

5) Other tax reform ideas including reducing or eliminating property taxes and cutting business taxes

While we’re not regular listeners to Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, we caught the fact that Limbaugh cited data from our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), during his monologue the other day. Not surprisingly, Limbaugh both misconstrues ITEP’s analysis and ignores basic economic realities.

Echoing a talking point circulating in conservative media that the tax code has no role in mitigating income inequality (and that somehow immigrants cause it), Limbaugh argued that, therefore, higher taxes on the rich cannot reduce income equality.  He said this is proven by simply making “a quick comparison of state inequality data and their corresponding tax codes.” He went on to assert that because California and New York have two of the most progressive tax systems but also some of the highest levels of income inequality, this means progressive taxes do nothing to reduce income inequality.

Honestly, it’s hard to know where to even start with breaking down this nonsense.

For one, Limbaugh must have overlooked the central conclusion of ITEP’s Who Pays report, which is that ALL state tax systems are regressive, meaning that even the most “progressive” state tax systems in the US still exacerbate income equality. Even in California, which Limbaugh claims has one of the most progressive tax systems (it doesn’t), 10.2 percent of family income for those in the bottom 20 percent is spent on state taxes, whereas only 9.8 percent of the top 1 percent’s income goes toward state taxes.

Another critical problem with Limbaugh’s monologue is that he did not actually do much analyzing, but instead opted to cherry-pick New York and California off the list of states with high levels of income inequality. By doing this, Limbaugh ignores the fact that Arizona and Texas have two of the most regressive tax systems and – what? – also happen to top of the income inequality list. To actually support his point, Limbaugh would have had to compare the relative progressivity of different tax systems with their level of income inequality, an impossible task considering that ITEP does not actually rank the states according to progressivity. In addition, Limbaugh does not even consider the myriad of factors (besides immigration) that contribute to income inequality, such as  government safety net and income supports, the types of jobs available and their wage levels, or the presence of industries, like finance, that generate unusually high wealth.

One last fatal flaw is that Limbaugh utterly ignores the reality that progressive taxes straightforwardly take more money from the wealthy and redistribute that money more evenly to the population through government services, which, for obvious reasons, affects income inequality. The fact is that basic economic logic and decades of economic analysis have shown that lower taxes on the rich directly increase income inequality. As a definitive study by the non-partisan and widely respected Congressional Research Service (CRS) puts it, “lowering top marginal tax rates has the effect of further increasing the disproportionate amount of income earned by the wealthiest of the wealthy.” Similarly, the OECD’s economic analysis of the US earlier this year found that our failure to implement a more progressive federal tax code was a critical factor in making the US the fourth most unequal country in the developed world and that this must be reversed in order to stave off even high income inequality.

Next time Rush Limbaugh wants to use ITEP numbers, he should check with us first – we’d be happy to enlighten him!

In an attempt to bolster income tax repeal efforts in states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, supply-side economist Arthur Laffer recently teamed up with an Oklahoma-based group to perform an analysis that predicts huge economic gains as a result of cutting state personal income taxes.  A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows, however, that the analysis is fundamentally flawed.

Bear with us as we guide you through a few methodological weeds.

At issue here is what’s called a regression analysis – a statistical tool used to explain the relationship between one set of variables and another.  In this case, Laffer has attempted to explain how state income tax rates affect economic growth, and, according to Laffer’s regression, the effect is enormous. He shows an inverse relationship between taxes and growth. That is, the lower the tax rates, the greater the economic growth.  Repealing Oklahoma’s income tax, he therefore predicts, will more than double the rate of personal income growth and state GDP growth, and create 312,000 jobs in the process.

If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

As ITEP’s new report explains, Laffer performs a data sleight of hand to produce his result.  He includes federal tax rates in an analysis supposedly aimed at explaining a state tax system. And as it turns out, this decision hugely distorts the results.  It allows him to include in his overall “tax rate” figures the Bush tax cuts – which caused a 4.1 percent drop in the top federal tax rate.  At the same time, his measure of economic growth just happens to be taken from the early 2000’s, when the country was climbing out of the post 9/11 recession. That is, the economic growth indicators were improving just as the Bush tax cuts were going into effect.

Laffer essentially creates a bogus measure (federal and state tax rates combined) and maps it onto an exceptional moment in economic history.  This allows him to create the illusion that cuts in state tax rates between 2001 and 2003 fueled economic growth later in the decade.  If the analysis is refocused on just state tax rates, the findings fall apart entirely, as the regression no longer shows any relationship between state tax rates and economic growth.

But Laffer’s analysis is plagued by more problems than these.  Also notable, as covered in an earlier report from ITEP, is its complete failure to measure the impact of other factors, from sunshine to oil production, that contribute to state economic growth.  The flaws in Laffer’s analysis are so fundamental that its findings cannot be taken seriously. 

ITEP’s two companion critiques of why Arthur Laffer’s analysis should not be trusted can be found here.

Photo of Art Laffer via Republican Conference Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0