Jared Walczak is Vice President of State Projects at the Tax Foundation. He is the lead researcher on the annual State Business Tax Climate Index and Location Matters, and has authored or coauthored tax reform guides on Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Jared’s work is regularly cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, AP, and many other prominent national and state outlets.
He previously served as legislative director to a member of the Senate of Virginia and as policy director for a statewide campaign, and consulted on research and policy development for a number of candidates and elected officials. In his free time, Jared enjoys hiking and has a goal of visiting all 63 national parks.
Latest Work
No Good Options as Chicago Seeks Revenue
Facing an $838 million budget shortfall, a looming pension crisis, and an aggressive spending wish list, some Chicago policymakers and activists are expressing interest in a laundry list of new and higher taxes that could, collectively, raise as much as an additional $4.5 billion a year.
6 min readSales Tax Rates in Major Cities, Midyear 2019
Sales taxes are levied in over 11,000 jurisdictions across the United States. In many cases, these local sales taxes can have a profound impact on the total rate that consumers pay.
12 min readLocal Income Taxes in 2019
13 min readState Throwback and Throwout Rules: A Primer
38 min readModernizing Utah’s Sales Tax: A Guide for Policymakers
By almost any measure, Utah is, and deserves to be, the envy of its peers. Utah leads the country in job growth, and the state’s economy has grown at twice the rate of the nation at large. Utah’s income tax reforms adopted in 2007 established a model for other states to follow. But today, some of these gains are being undone—not by conscious policy choices, but by their absence.
6 min read