State Tax Shelters and U.S. Fiscal Federalism‪.‬

I. INTRODUCTION In his article, State Tax Shelters and the Competition for Capital, (1) Professor Joseph Bankman offers an insightful perspective on how the tax shelter game has played out at the state level. Bankman's analysis usefully connects the ongoing battles in the trenches (e.g., state court litigation over intangible holding companies) with the broader issues of tax competition, the Tiebout hypothesis, and difficulty of taxing capital in a multijurisdictional setting. For defenders of state corporate income taxes, Bankman's conclusions are not hopeful. "Despite the best efforts of state tax officials," he concludes, "competition will make the corporate tax harder and harder to implement." (2)