Corporate Political Spending and State Tax Policy: Evidence from Citizens United
46 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2022 Last revised: 2 Mar 2023
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Corporate Political Spending and State Tax Policy: Evidence from Citizens United
Corporate Political Spending and State Tax Policy: Evidence from Citizens United
Date Written: April 13, 2022
Abstract
To what extent is U.S. state tax policy affected by corporate political contributions? The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling provides an exogenous shock to corporate campaign spending, allowing corporations to spend on elections in 23 states which previously had spending bans. Ten years after the ruling and for a wide range of outcomes, we are not able to identify statistically significant effects of corporate independent expenditures on state tax policy, including tax rates, discretionary tax breaks, and tax revenues. Our results allow for a moderate economic effect on corporate tax rates and revenues, but suggest economically insignificant effects for other tax outcomes of interest to firms and their owners. A complementary analysis of the original introduction of the spending bans supports our finding that corporate spending has modest, if any, effects on tax policy.
Keywords: campaign finance, political contributions, Citizens United, independent spending, state taxes, state revenues, state expenditures
JEL Classification: D72, H20, H71
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation