ABSTRACT
Excise taxation often is categorized as indirect taxation because it is thought that the incidence can be shifted to someone other than one who initially pays these taxes. Consideration of the use of excise taxes by different levels of government also is revealing. For unitary governments, the subnational level includes only local levies, while for federal systems both the state/provincial and local levels make up the subnational category. A closer look at excise taxation in the United States entails use of a different source of data from that used for international comparisons, and there are some discrepancies between the sources. Several measures of the level or significance of state and local excise taxes are considered, based on fiscal 1990 data. One reason for the more rapid growth of general sales tax revenues than of selective excise tax revenues in the United States in decades is that there have been more adoptions of general sales taxes.
