Why subscribe?

For millennia, salt roads were essential thoroughfares of commerce, connecting disparate regions and cultures and influencing every region they touched. State and local tax (SALT) is a little like that: it runs through, and has an effect upon, just about everything we do. Hence The SALT Road, a new Substack newsletter on state and local tax policy, liberally salted with other economic and fiscal policy-adjacent musings and resources.

In this newsletter, you will find:

• a roundup of important developments in state and local tax

• analysis of key and emerging tax policy issues

• resources, including maps and charts, that are free for use in your own publications

• links to essential reading elsewhere

• occasional reviews and analysis of relevant books, articles, and other research in economics and public finance

With eleven years’ experience at the Tax Foundation, including five years as Vice President of State Projects, I’ve written hundreds of pieces of tax policy analysis, worked with countless lawmakers, and testified before dozens of state legislatures. Now, as I transition to a senior fellow role at the Tax Foundation and launch my own fiscal policy consulting shop, Walczak Policy Consulting, I’m launching this Substack to reach a new audience with regular updates from the tax policy trenches.

For those in policy organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, and other policy spaces, I hope this newsletter will help you keep abreast of developments in state tax, point you to useful information and analyses, and perhaps supply resources that you can incorporate into your own work.

For lawmakers, journalists, practitioners, and others interested in state and local tax policy, I hope the roundups and analyses will provide something of interest. Please subscribe today. It’s free!

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