The Politics of Tax Increases in the States

This paper updates a recent study of the factors prompting states to adopt new tax instruments by testing the explanation supported in the original work over a longer time period and broadening the pooled cross-sectional time series analysis to include increases in the rates of existing tax instruments. Our results are consistent with the original study's support for a political opportunity explanation that suggests that politicians are most likely to adopt tax increases when the electoral risks of doing so are minimized.