Yeah, it's all state and local taxes of all types according to the source. Except there is no such thing as a "death tax"... Perhaps you mean "estate tax"?
This might be the kernel of our disagreement. In my view the fact that people can move states to try to avoid higher taxes is a problem and constitutes a reason that the federal government is better situated than the state governments to tax more progressively. It's what's called a "race to the bottom". States basically can't meaningfully tax rich people because they just move. States end up trying to undercut one another's tax rates to attract rich people and the ultimately result is what we have- regressive taxation at the state level. It's basically impossible for a state to have progressive taxation.
The classic race to the bottom problem is child labor. Child labor laws used to be solely at the state level. So corporations that wanted cheap labor would set up in whichever state had the slackest child labor laws. States competing for the taxes those corporations would bring kept undercutting one another with more and more. One state would let 14 year olds work in factories, but only for 4 hours a day. Then another would allow 8 hours. Then another would allow 13 years. Then another would say they could work in mines. And so on, lower and lower, until 10 year olds could work 12 hours shifts in coal mines.... Probably virtually nobody actually wanted that to be the law, but competitive pressures forced them to do it. So, the federal government had to step in and set a floor for child labor laws.
Competition between states is good for some things. For example, maybe one state will try investing heavily in computer oriented education and another will invest heavily in biology oriented education, one will do better than the other, and then the rest of the nation will tend to follow the stronger example. But that only works where the competitive forces are pressuring a state to do better. When it's competition over who can do the worst, that's no good.
Hmm, that's true. I probably shouldn't have used a bartender, which is indeed an intra-state business... But I will agree that there is some amount of state-level interests, but there also are some intrastate interests. Maybe the bartender is more concerned about the state and the orange seller is more concerned with the nation. But I would contend that we've steadily been shifting towards national interests and away from state interests. That orange seller going out of business does put some folks out of work locally, but some of them will go to another state to find orange related work. It may also put somebody in a grocery chain 10 states away out of business.
Yeah, great discussion.