Tax Blog

In an article to be published in State Tax Notes' December 6 issue, I argue generally that claims that high state taxes discourage economic development may be flawed because they look at statistics selectively and fall prey to the fallacy that correlation implies causation.  In particular, I consider an article by Arthur Laffer in the Wall Street Journal in October, in which data on personal income per capita do not appear to be consistent with the relevant government-issued data.  The Laffer article argued that the introduction of income taxes by various states over the past fifty years ...