Borders and Burdens: Three Essays on Inter-jurisdictional Tax Policy in America

Individuals, firms, and governments make decisions about the tradeoffs of different tax policies at jurisdictional borders, such as those between states, nations, or local governments; those choices shape the burden of taxation. This dissertation examines the effects of three distinct changes in tax policy: for state corporate income tax apportionment, colonial tobacco tariffs, and tax abatements for data centers. Chapter 1 examines how changes to the corporate income tax base formula affect state tax revenues. Chapter 2 analyzes how colonial era export and import tariffs on tobacco impacted trade volumes, raised revenue, and the distribution of the tax burden between producers and consumers. Chapter 3 estimates the effect of attracting a data center to a locality through tax abatements on public sector activity. These essays provide insight into how tax policy affects government revenue, economic incentives, and inter-jurisdictional choice. Across settings as varied as colonial era empires and modern state and local governments, these chapters show how borders, whether geographic or political, shape the burden of taxation. Tax policy decisions at and within these borders determine how revenue is raised, and by extension where economic activity occurs and which taxpayers bear the greater burden of those decisions. At its core, the study of taxation is about choices—and choices involve tradeoffs. The effects of these choices are, and will continue to be, a relevant focus of economic research.