Jared Walczak is a Senior Fellow at the Tax Foundation, where he spent five years as Vice President of State Projects, and president of Walczak Policy Consulting.
Jared has written or co-written tax reform guides for more than a dozen states and has served as the principal author of the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index and Location Matters. He is also a regular on the conference circuit and has testified before legislatures in 35 states. His efforts have been instrumental in securing tax reform in many states, including sweeping reforms in Iowa and Louisiana, along with substantive reforms in Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, among others.
Jared also serves as a member of the faculty of the Institute for Professionals in Taxation, sits on the state tax advisory board of the Institute for State Policy Leaders, and contributes to Tax Notes State magazine. He is the author of the “SALT Road” Substack, a free newsletter on state and local tax policy.
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 read
Sales 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 read
Local Income Taxes in 2019
13 min read
State Throwback and Throwout Rules: A Primer
38 min read
Modernizing 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
Iowa Adopts a “Soft” Property Tax Cap
3 min read