All Things in Moderation

I was thinking today about our discussion regarding what method the Feds should use to fund federal spending, and it suddenly occurred to me that we don’t actually need a single method.  This is the beauty of a federal system.  If we think of the nation as it was originally conceived, a collection of semi-sovereign states bound together through the Constitution and governed by a federal government, then it is easy to imagine a system in which the federal government simply tells member states how much they owe, and the states themselves figure out how to come up with the money.  So if Californians like a a progressive income tax, they can have one, and if Texans prefer a consumption tax, they can have that too, and New York can have a transaction tax on all the evil Wall Street transactions , if that is how they prefer to raise the funds owed to the Feds.

The issue then becomes how to determine what the burden should be for each state.  If a balanced budget is desirable, the states, combined, need to be charged whatever the Feds are going to spend.   Since federal spending is generally measured as a percent of GDP, and since GDP is basically the sum total of either all income or all expenditures in the economy (depending on how you set out to measure it), making an individual state’s contributions a function of GDP makes sense and can be viewed as either a tax on income or consumption, depending on your preference.  And, interestingly enough, we can and do measure each state’s share of GDP, called GSP (Gross State Product).  So we have a ready and easy metric to determine what a given state’s share of the federal tax burden should be. If, say, federal spending is going to be set at roughly 20% of GDP annually, why not make each state’s contribution to the federal coffers be 20% of each individual state’s GSP?  Again, individual states can determine for themselves how to actually raise the amount owed from its citizens.  This would put an end to divisive national discussions about tax rate disparities, different “kinds” of income, and who is paying their  “fair share”, and would create a system of competition among states for the most efficient and “fair” method of raising funds.

Thinking about this, I decided to check to see how such a methodology would compare to what individual states have actually been contributing to the federal coffers.  The most recent year for which I could easily find both GSP figures and federal taxes paid broken out by state was 2007.  Note that the federal taxes broken out by state include both income taxes and corporate taxes.  It turns out that 2007 is actually a good year to use, because total revenues that year amounted to 19.5% of the sum of all state GSP’s, and the last time we actually had a balanced budget, federal spending was roughly 20% of GDP, so if we use that as a baseline for what spending “should” be, 2007 would have produced a balanced budget.  The results were interesting.

In 2007, the top 5 states in terms of GSP were also the top 5 states in terms of taxes paid to the federal government (see chart below).  Note that the positions of New York and Texas flip depending on whether the order is GSP or taxes paid, but otherwise the top 5 is in order either way.  The rest of the states are also roughly in the same order, which is not that surprising since GSP is a measure of all income received in that state, and federal taxes are currently based on income.  There were a couple of outliers, however, for example, Minnesota is number 9 in terms of taxes paid, but drops to 16 in terms of GSP, and Connecticut, which is 16 in taxes paid drops to 23 in GSP.  But for the most part the order of states is pretty close.

Next I compared what states actually paid with what they would have paid had their “bill” to the federal government been determined by a “flat” tax of 19.5 percent of GSP which would result in total revenue equal to that which was actually collected.  There were some interesting disparities.  For example, California, which had the highest GSP and paid the highest taxes still only paid 17.42% of its GSP in taxes, more than 2% less than it would have paid under a “flat tax” of 19.5% on GSP.   Another way of saying this:  Californian’s share of GDP was 13.14% but it’s share of the federal tax burden was only 11.76%.  On the other hand, Connecticut paid more than 22.5% of its GSP in taxes, 3% more than it would have paid with a flat 19.5%, and while it’s share of GDP was 1.55%, it paid over 2% of all tax revenue.    See below for a list of all states (numbers in millions of $).

Then, just for fun, I decided to see what would happen if the Feds allocated a state’s share of the tax burden in the same way it currently allocates an individual’s share of the burden, ie progressively.  So, for example, since the share of taxes paid by the top 1% of income earners is 36.7%, I looked at what it would take to make the share of the top 1% of GSP states be an equivalent 36.7%.  And so on for the next 4% (22% share of taxes), 5-10% (11.8% share), 10-25% (16.8% share), 25-50% (10.4% share), and finally the bottom 50% (2.3% share).

It turns out that under a progressive tax on GSP, the top 10% of states are all paying less than their “fair share”, while the bottom 90% are all over paying more.  Far and away the most egregious under-payer is California which, being the top 1% in terms of GSP, should be paying more than 3 times what it is currently paying.  The biggest over-payer is Arkansas, which is paying almost 10 times what it would be paying under a “fairer”, progressive system.  See chart below for what all states would pay, and their share of all taxes paid.

Come on California and Texas…start pulling your weight!!!!

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