With the Powerball Jackpot at $118 million, Americans in 43 states and D.C. are lining up for tickets. While one or more persons will get the winning numbers sooner or later, every state that allows ticket sales also wins big. After all, the coffers of the 44 participating jurisdictions get a slice of every jackpot,

The Texas legislature is considering two pieces of legislation (Senate Bill 2 and Senate Joint Resolution 76) which are aimed at reducing local property tax burdens. SB 2 would cap property tax levy increases at 2.5 percent, while SJR 76 aims to mitigate property taxes by shifting part of the burden to sales taxes instead.

On Thursday evening, the Oregon Joint Committee on Student Success held a hearing on House Bill 2019 and two amendments. The first amendment outlines the Committee’s plans to improve Oregon’s public education system. The second amendment provides details on how the Committee will raise the $1 billion in annual revenue required to support the public

Like other states, the Texas legislature is examining a proposal to extend the state’s 10 percent rental car excise tax onto peer-to-peer car-sharing firms. The proposal is creative in trying to resolve how sales taxes should apply to vehicles sold and used in peer-to-peer car-sharing arrangements but suffers from attempting to further extend an inefficient

Cigarette taxes around the country are levied on top of the federal rate of $1.0066 per 20-pack of cigarettes. As of 2016, taxes accounted for almost half of the retail cost of a pack of cigarettes. On average, states charge $1.73 of taxes per pack of 20 cigarettes. If high taxes were the goal, New York and

Oregon’s Joint Committee on Student Success Subcommittee on Revenue is moving closer to recommending a revenue option to fund Oregon’s education system. The subcommittee presented three options to the Student Success Committee last Thursday night, modeled on Ohio’s gross receipts tax and Texas’ margin tax, a modified gross receipts tax that allows for some deduction

This week, Indiana lawmakers advanced legislation to mitigate the impact of the state’s tangible personal property (TPP) tax. Senate Bill 233 was amended by the House and sent back to the Senate, where a previous version of the bill passed in January with no senators opposing. If enacted, this legislation would double Indiana’s TPP tax

Hawaii’s Senate Bill 1474 would raise the state’s sales tax from 4 percent to 4.5 percent, to provide $350 million in a dedicated education fund. The bill has passed the Senate and awaits action in the House. While well-intentioned, this bill would increase the state’s reliance on a poorly-structured tax, with no guarantee that the

While income and consumption taxes are levied on a general base, an excise tax is a tax on a specific good or activity. You’ll typically see excise taxes on things like cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, soda, gasoline, insurance premiums, amusement activities, and pari-mutuels (betting), among other goods and activities. Excise taxes make up a relatively small portion of

Two bills pending in Texas’s Senate Finance Committee would simplify sales tax compliance for many vendors as Texas prepares to tax online sales, though some issues remain. Senate Bills 70 and 890 provide remote sellers with an alternative to complying with the local rates set by each of Texas’s 1,594 local taxing jurisdictions. They also

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Kentucky’s 2019 regular legislative session ended Thursday without progress on infrastructure funding. House Bill 517, a comprehensive infrastructure funding bill, died without a vote. Similar legislation was introduced in 2018 but likewise did not receive a vote. House Bill 517 would have increased the gas tax by 10 cents per gallon (cpg), created a new

The Council of the District of Columbia is considering multiple property tax proposals with the stated goal of reducing the tax burden of homeowners who have seen their property taxes rise as home values have grown. The most efficient, economically neutral, and transparent way to provide tax relief is to simply reduce the millage rate

Two bills sitting in Texas’s Senate Finance Committee would put the Lone Star State in a good position to tax online sales. Senate Bills 70 and 890 solve legal issues with online taxes by outlining a uniform internet sales tax for state and local jurisdictions along with specific guidelines for distribution of the revenue. This

Key Findings State and local governments have used car rental excise taxes to raise revenue, including for projects like stadium construction and amateur sports funding. Forty-four states levy rental car excise taxes. Most states also permit county and municipal governments to add a rental car tax, which may range from a flat-dollar surcharge to an

With the release of his first biennial budget, introduced as Senate Bill 59, Wisconsin’s new Governor Tony Evers (D) has proposed dozens of miscellaneous tax changes. While the budget  offers targeted income tax cuts for certain low- and middle-income taxpayers, these cuts are far outweighed by tax increases elsewhere, such as business taxes and excise

Key Findings Individual income taxes are a major source of state government revenue, accounting for 37 percent of state tax collections. Forty-three states levy individual income taxes. Forty-one tax wage and salary income, while two states–New Hampshire and Tennessee–exclusively tax dividend and interest income. Seven states levy no income tax at all. Of those states

Last year, Kentucky adopted a major tax overhaul: it dropped its income and corporate taxes by a point, removed numerous credits and carveouts from the income and sales taxes, reduced the archaic inventory tax, and adopted single-sales factor apportionment and combined reporting for business taxes. Altogether, the package (enacted over Governor Bevin’s veto) raised some

Lawmakers in Maine’s 129th legislature have proposed a bill (HP 797) to impose an excise tax of 12 cents per gallon on water extraction performed by each bottled water operator that extracted more than 1 million gallons of groundwater or surface water in the previous calendar year. This plan purports to stimulate the economy of

On Friday, legislators in Arkansas introduced Senate Bill 576, which would dramatically increase the competitiveness of Arkansas’s tax code. Based on recommendations from the Arkansas Tax Reform and Relief Legislative Task Force, the bill would overhaul Arkansas’s corporate income tax code. The bill includes several key reforms to the corporate income tax. First, the bill