Introduction

Grading Tax Systems

A message from the publisher

he February 2003 issue of Governing is devoted to taxes, as timely a subject as it is unpleasant, because the question of how much revenue every state must raise from whom will be the hottest issue in most state legislatures this spring and beyond.

Our report on state tax systems is the result of an extraordinarily ambitious effort to determine three things: how well all 50 states are positioned to collect the revenues they will need to continue providing their current level of services, how fair their tax structures are, and how well they are administered. As we have in past efforts, we evaluate each area, only this time instead of using letter grades, we employ a simple gold-star system. We make no attempt to rank individual states in any category; we’ll leave that to others.

Our purpose here is straightforward. As states debate what to do about taxes — leave them alone, raise them or overhaul them — they can use this report as a baseline to determine where they stand compared with everyone else on adequacy, fairness and efficiency.

This report is the fifth installment of the Government Performance Project, a journalistic-academic alliance funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, but this time some of the players have changed. It is produced with the support of the Pew Center on the States, which also operates the excellent Web site on state information called Stateline.org, and with whom we hope to be affiliated for some years to come. And rather than having one institution charged with providing the academic contribution, as was true in the past, we sought it out from scholars and other experts all over the country.

As with our previous reports on the quality of management in states, cities and counties, I strongly urge you to read the introduction to this report because it offers an assessment of the states’ revenue-raising systems that is as intelligent, clear and objective as any I have ever read.

The quality of the researching, reporting and writing is attributable to some very talented and dedicated reporters. The remarkable husband-wife team of Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene led the effort, with strong assistance from Michele Mariani and Anya Sostek, two young women with bright futures in serious journalism. It was edited and packaged with the usual care and judgment by Alan Ehrenhalt, Anne Jordan and Penelope Lemov.

It was hard, grueling work, but worth it because how we choose to tax ourselves is one of the most important and, thanks to the stalled economy, most pressing issues facing state and local governments. We are so confident that the issue will be with us for some time that we have chosen one of the experts we relied on heavily during the past six months, David Brunori, as a regular columnist on the subject.

Copyright © 2003, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are registered trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.