U.S. State and Local Tax Rates, 1975 - 2022

We develop a dataset of state (1977–2022) and local (2000–2022) tax rates from personal income, corporate income, property, sales, and excise taxes. We utilize sources such as NBER TaxSim, Tax Foundation, CCH CorpSystem, state and local level tax authority websites (typically the department of revenue or equivalent body), as well as data from other research. For each state and local tax type, we collect annual data going back in time as far possible. Local jurisdictions include everything from city and county governments to overlapping taxing geographies defined by local school boundaries, water and fire districts, or even specially constructed business tax districts. We aggregate local tax rates to the county level as this represents a stable and well-defined geographic mapping that is non-overlapping and corresponds well to other available measures of governmental oversight and economic activity.

Geographic Coverage:    U.S. States and Counties

Related Publications

The following publications cite the data in this project.

• Baker, Scott R., Pawel Janas, and Lorenz Kueng. “Correlation in State and Local Tax Changes.” Journal of Public Economics 242 (February 2025): 105275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105275.

• Baker, Scott, Pawel Janas, and Lorenz Kueng. “Correlation in State and Local Tax Changes.” National Bureau of Economic Research, August 1, 2024.