Coveting Thy Neighbor's Manuafacturing: The Dilemma of State Income Apportionment

Goolsbee, Austan; Maydew, Edward L.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.160535

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Coveting Thy Neighbor's Manuafacturing: The Dilemma of State Income Apportionment

27 Pages Posted: 19 May 1999

See all articles by Austan Goolsbee

Austan Goolsbee

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Edward L. Maydew

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 1999

Abstract

This paper investigates the economic impact of the apportionment formulae used to divide corporate income taxes among the states. Most apportionment formulae, by including payroll, turn the state corporate income tax at least partially into a payroll tax. Using panel data from 1978-1994, the results show that this distortion has an important effect on state-level employment. For the average state, reducing the payroll weight from one-third to one-quarter increases manufacturing employment around 1.1%, concentrated in manufacturing and with larger effects in the long-run. The results also suggest that apportionment changes have important negative externalities on other states. On average, the aggregate effects of apportionment formula changes are close to zero.

JEL Classification: H25

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Goolsbee, Austan and Maydew, Edward L., Coveting Thy Neighbor's Manuafacturing: The Dilemma of State Income Apportionment (February 1999). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=160535 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.160535