Online shopping can redistribute local tax revenue from urban to rural America

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Agrawal, David R.; Shybalkina, Iuliia
• 署名单位: University of Kentucky; University of Kentucky
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104818
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Sales tax; Online shopping; E-commerce; Covid-19; Tax revenue

摘要

What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax rev-enue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As e-commerce increases, a destination basis for remote sales taxes results in higher growth in local sales tax collections in smaller, generally more rural jurisdictions. This increase comes at the expense of larger urban retail centers, which previously enjoyed an origin basis for sales tax collections. As households replace in-person commerce with online shopping, sales taxes no longer accrue to urban centers with large concen-trations of retail establishments and instead expand the tax base of smaller jurisdictions. State-level reforms that enforce sales tax compliance generally mitigate the revenue falls in larger jurisdictions and amplify the increases in smaller jurisdictions.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.