New Jersey May Be the First State Without an Excise Tax Levy on Recreational Marijuana

Last week, New Jersey’s legislature took the first step towards making recreational marijuana legal when Senator and Majority Whip Nicholas P. Scutari (D) and Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney (D) introduced Senate Bill 21 (S21), New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance, and Marketplace Modernization Act. If enacted, S21 would legalize and tax recreational marijuana in…

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Prospects for Federal Tax Policy After the 2020 Election

As Americans receive more clarity on the outcome of the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, the prospects for federal tax policy headed into 2021 are also becoming clearer. A Biden administration may have to work with a Republican Senate majority (pending the results of runoff elections in Georgia) and a Democrat-controlled House to navigate various…

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Comparing Europe’s Tax Systems: Consumption Taxes

Today we examine how European countries rank on consumption taxes, continuing our map series on our recently published 2020 International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI). The ITCI measures and compares the competitiveness and neutrality of all 36 OECD countries’ tax systems, looking at corporate income taxes, individual taxes, consumption taxes, property taxes, and the international tax…

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Election Analysis: Why Voters Split the Difference on Income Tax Measures

Illinois voters rejected a high graduated rate income tax while Arizonans embraced a large income tax rate increase for high earners, among the many attention-grabbing results from Tuesday’s elections—most of which, admittedly, weren’t about taxes. Coloradans, meanwhile, ratified an income tax cut in a year that many expected voters to instead be weighing in on…

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Election Analysis: Recreational Marijuana Now Legal in Four More States

Tuesday, voters in four states, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota, approved ballot measures legalizing recreational marijuana. The vote was only close in one state, South Dakota. That raises the total to 15 states plus the District of Columbia that have legalized recreational marijuana one way or another. Recreational marijuana has been a hot…

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