Law Commons^™

Commerce Clause Restraints On State Tax Incentives, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The states' provision of tax incentives designed to encourage economic development within their borders has long been a feature of the American legislative landscape. Today every state provides tax incentives as an inducement to local industrial location and expansion. Indeed, scarcely a day goes by without some state offering yet another tax incentive to spur economic development, often in an effort to attract a particular enterprise to the state.

The debate over the efficacy and wisdom of state tax and other business incentives is intense and important, as other articles in this Symposium plainly reveal. My purpose here, however, is …

Suspect Linkage: The Interplay Of State Taxing And Spending Measures In The Application Of Constitutional Antidiscrimination Rules, Dan T. Coenen, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This article examines an important and recurring question that courts frequently resolve, but rarely analyze: whether taxing and spending measures should be viewed together when a state imposes a nondiscriminatory tax but also affords relief to some taxpayers through government spending. The answer to this question will often determine whether the state's actions violate constitutional strictures against discriminatory taxation. The taxing measure and the spending measure will generally pass muster if viewed in isolation. After all, courts rarely invalidate nondiscriminatory taxing measures on constitutional grounds. And true government spending measures, if considered alone, plainly fall outside the reach of constitutional …

Suspect Linkage: The Interplay Of State Taxing And Spending Measures In The Application Of Constitutional Antidiscrimination Rules, Dan T. Coenen, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This article examines an important and recurring question that courts frequently resolve, but rarely analyze: whether taxing and spending measures should be viewed together when a state imposes a nondiscriminatory tax but also affords relief to some taxpayers through government spending. the answer to this question will often determine whether the state's actions violate constitutional strictures against discriminatory taxation. The taxing measure and the spending measure will generally pass muster if viewed in isolation. After all, courts rarely invalidate nondiscriminatory taxing measures on constitutional grounds. And true government spending measures, if considered alone, plainly fall outside the reach of constitutional …

Taxing Electronic Commerce: Preliminary Thoughts On Model Uniform Legislation, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This report on Taxing Electronic Commerce was presented at the symposium on multi-jurisdictional taxation of electronic commerce at Harvard University on April 5, 1997. This report describes the normative principles shared by most serious analyses of the problems raised by state taxation of electronic commerce. It then attempts to translate these principles into legal rules that could provide a model for uniform legislation in this area. Finally it addresses constitutional questions that will likely be encountered in any effort to implement such legislation.

State Taxation Of Electronic Commerce, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The coming of the information age has profound implications for state taxation as it does for just about everything else. The exponential growth and increasing commercialization of the Internet, along with the sweeping technological and regulatory changes that have reconfigured the telecommunications industry, pose a daunting challenge to the states’ traditional approaches to taxing business activity and the telecommunications system that facilitates it. State tax administrators and policymakers, alarmed at the prospect that their tax bases will disappear into cyberspace, are seeking means to accommodate their taxing regimes to the new technological environment. The business community, on the other hand, …

Taxation Of Telecommunications And Electronic Commerce, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.