Task: Compare the taxes used by the State of Georgia to your assigned state and assess the results against a set of tax criteria you establish.
Purpose: To reinforce concepts on tax principles and individual tax sources.
Tax principles/criteria represent the normative standards that should guide policy (see Lewis & Hildreth, pages 202-218).
Focus on the rate, base, and (recent) collections for at least the following revenue sources (if the state government uses them): sales and use tax, personal and corporate income taxes, property tax, gas (motor fuel) tax, and the cigarette (tobacco) tax.
For example, if you purchase a suit for $100 that is defined by state law as a taxable item (therefore, it is part of the tax base) and the state sales tax rate is 10%, then the state would collect $10 from that purchase (the total that you would pay is $110, including the $100 price of the shirt plus $10 of taxes). Adding up all the taxed purchases that the state receives constitutes the sales tax collections for the year.
This information will allow you to compare these two state tax systems against a policy framework and draw conclusions about the results.
After you find the information on taxes for both states, evaluate them based on the tax criteria. This involves the first step of choosing your criteria (read pages 202-218 of Lewis & Hildreth). As you read through, think about how taxes of your state and Georgia follow any of the criteria. For example, which of the two states have a broader tax base? Does the broad tax base lead to higher revenues or does the state have a high tax with a narrow base? Provide information that you think helps support your point of view. You should include a minimum of 3 criteria to evaluate your taxes.
The class may research the State of Georgia revenue system as a group and then use that information and framework as a guide for pulling comparative information on the assigned second state government; to do so will require reading ahead (Chapter 7 and perhaps dividing up some of the work on the Georgia profile.
In your report, you have to show research using your assigned state’s (NORTH DAKOTA)
primary source documents (and provide the weblinks and page numbers) and not rely only on secondary documents.
You should start your research with these documents:
Official source documents from your assigned state government on its taxes (in your paper, give the web site addresses that confirm they are from your assigned state government’s web site)
