Help us achieve a world where the tax code doesn't stand in the way of success.
The Tax Foundation is the nation’s leading independent tax policy nonprofit. Since 1937, our principled research, insightful analysis, and engaged experts have informed smarter tax policy at the federal, state, and global levels. For over 80 years, our goal has remained the same: to improve lives through tax policies that lead to greater economic growth and opportunity.
State governments have traditionally raised revenue from business by taxing corporate income. But in recent years the growing difficulty of administering state corporate income taxes has prompted a resurgence in one of the world’s oldest broad-based tax structures: the gross receipts tax, also known as the “turnover tax.”
Gross receipts taxes have a simple structure, taxing all business sales with few or no deductions. Because they tax transactions, they are often compared to retail sales taxes. However, while well designed sales taxes apply only to final sales to consumers, gross receipts taxes tax all transactions, including intermediate business-to-business purchases of supplies, raw materials and equipment. As a result, gross receipts taxes create an extra layer of taxation at each stage of production that sales and other taxes do not—something economists call “tax pyramiding.”
