Coordination of Federal and State Tax Systems

Report Outline
Multiplication of Duplicating Levies
Growth and Effects of Tax Conflicts
Progress in Reduction of Tax Conflicts
Proposed Plans for Tax Coordination
Special Focus

Multiplication of Duplicating Levies

New Levies Enacted by Legislatures of the States

Hard-Pressed for additional revenues to meet relief, social security, and other costs, legislatures now in session in many of the states will overhaul their tax systems, adding new types of taxes and revising existing levies. Several have already done so. Although comprehensive changes in the federal tax structure this year are unlikely, the present movement in the states to diversity tax sources will aggravate the growing conflict between federal and state tax systems over which concern has repeatedly been expressed by President Roosevelt.

In a speech to the United States Conference of Mayors, at Washington, November 19, 1935, the President announced his intention of calling a conference during 1936 to revise and coordinate federal, state, and local tax systems.

Taxes have grown up like Topsy in this country [he said]. There have been a great many efforts to simplify taxation, to establish lines of demarcation between the different types of taxation, giving certain types to localities, others to the states, and still others to the federal government.