Jared Walczak is Vice President of State Projects at the Tax Foundation. He is the lead researcher on the annual State Business Tax Climate Index and Location Matters, and has authored or coauthored tax reform guides on Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Jared’s work is regularly cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, AP, and many other prominent national and state outlets.
He previously served as legislative director to a member of the Senate of Virginia and as policy director for a statewide campaign, and consulted on research and policy development for a number of candidates and elected officials. In his free time, Jared enjoys hiking and has a goal of visiting all 63 national parks.
Location Matters is an account of tax complexity and the ways that tax structure affect competitiveness. For policymakers, it represents an opportunity to explore the seemingly more arcane tax provisions that can have a significant impact on business tax burdens, and to discover how their tax code—often completely by accident—picks winners and losers.
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A landmark comparison of corporate tax costs in all 50 states, Location Matters provides a comprehensive calculation of real-world tax burdens, going beyond headline rates to demonstrate how tax codes impact businesses and offering policymakers a road map to improvement.
8 min read
State and local tax policy have always mattered, but the rise of remote work is bringing tax burdens and economic competitiveness to the forefront. It is a development that states cannot afford to ignore.
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Remote work is here to stay. Convenience rules can’t change that. What they can change is the decisions people make. Under this rule, those decisions may not be to Arkansas’s advantage.
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Newly implemented county and regional taxes yield state and local top marginal tax rates in excess of 26 percent for many Portland small businesses, and if all of President Biden’s tax proposals were adopted, those owners could face all-in marginal rates of more than 80 percent, far and away the highest in the country going back decades.
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Raising rates on those with the most flexibility to leave—or never to return—risks turning those fears into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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Tax cut legislation is not just a red state phenomenon, and tax reductions come in many forms other than rate reductions. The American Rescue Plan Act’s state tax cuts limitation is a problem for more states than you think.
2 min read
The government of Hartford County, Connecticut is in line to receive $173 million in local aid under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). There’s only one problem: the government of Hartford County doesn’t exist, nor do any of Connecticut’s other counties have county-level government despite being allocated a collective $691 million under the bill.
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States which forgo income taxes have seen population and economic growth vastly outstripping their peers, and a post-pandemic culture that is friendlier to remote work will greatly enhance tax competition.
71 min read
New Yorkers faced the highest burden, with 14.1 percent of income in the state going to state and local taxes. Connecticut (12.8 percent) and Hawaii (12.7 percent) followed.
19 min read
The American Rescue Plan Act’s restriction on states’ Fiscal Recovery Funds being used to directly or indirectly offset a net tax cut is vague and raises difficult questions of interpretation and application. A broad interpretation of this prohibition may be unconstitutional.
19 min read
Senate amendments to the American Rescue Plan Act prohibit using any of the $350 billion in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to cut taxes, but many are concerned that states which accept the funds could be prohibited from implementing tax cuts between now and 2024—an astonishing level of federal interference in states’ fiscal affairs.
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Here’s each state’s estimated revenue gains or losses in 2020, alongside the state and local aid that would be allocated to each under the American Rescue Plan Act.
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Mississippi has an opportunity to become the 10th state without an individual income tax and to do so with sales tax rates which, while certainly high, are in line with regional competitors. For such a momentous undertaking, however, policymakers should be equipped with reliable revenue projections and a detailed accounting of how much revenue is projected to come from each offsetting change. A change worth doing is worth doing right.
15 min read
Under the budget introduced by Gov. Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania’s flat personal income tax rate would increase by 46 percent, partially offset by an outsized increase in the poverty credit, which would see a family of four eligible for partial relief due to poverty until they reached $100,000 in taxable income—four times the poverty line.
6 min read
Approximately $78 billion might be owed in federal and state income taxes on the unemployment compensation payments made since the pandemic began.
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The Tax Foundation’s “State Tax Policy Boot Camp,” is ideal for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of state taxation.
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In addition to its economic impact on Maryland businesses and the likelihood of serious legal challenges, Maryland’s proposed digital advertising tax is incredibly vague on vital definitions, creating uncertainty about where revenue is sourced and when it is subject to the tax.
17 min read
By failing to keep pace with modern consumption patterns, sales taxes have become less neutral, less equitable, and less economically efficient over time.
16 min read