Navin presents tax exportation research
Economics and finance department chair John Navin recently presented research on tax exportation.
Tax exportation, according to Navin, is how state and local governments “design their tax system so that the taxes are paid by people who don’t live there.”
Navin presented his research earlier this month in Carbondale to the SIU Carbondale economics department, as well as at the Midwest Economics Association’s conference in Columbus, Ohio last month.
Navin said his specialty is state and local public finance and “tax exportation is a big issue in that area.” The research focused on generating a “really large computer model that looks at every single tax collected in every single state” and Washington, D.C., according to Navin.
“The classic example we talk about is Florida where what they have in Florida is a bunch of hotel taxes,” Navin said. “So they get all this revenue from people who don’t live in Florida… then they can use that money to do things they want like build parks and pay for school and things like that.”
Navin said he chose to investigate tax exportation because of new computer technology and the availability of a lot more data.
“This has been an issue for 40 years, but with the new comp technology and data we can actually take a much better look at it, much more in depth,” Navin said.
Filed Under: Economics