Beyond Blinders and Boomerangs: Assessing State Business Taxation

Abstract

Karl A. Frieden’s article, “Wearing Blinders in the Debate Over Business’s ‘Fair Share’ of State Taxes” and his subsequent article, “The Boomerang Effect of the Business ‘Fair Share’ Tax Debate,” jointly contend that progressive calls to strengthen state corporate income taxes (CITs) are misguided because businesses allegedly overpay certain other state and local taxes. This essay argues that, while Frieden does raise some valid points about the efficiency of specific tax design choices, his core argument fundamentally misconstrues the central issues: the ultimate incidence of business taxes, the pursuit of equity and efficiency, and the importance of combating harmful tax avoidance. His approach suffers from what might be termed the “incidence fallacy,” and it relies on a straw man representation of progressive arguments, especially those of the group he labels “BEMS” (Dan R. Bucks, Peter D. Enrich, Michael Mazerov, and Darien Shanske)