Research Reports: 2015

North Carolina’s tax code penalizes savings and investment by double taxing their returns— specifically interest, dividends, and capital gains. These biases can only be eliminated by removing savings and investment from the tax base, or by eliminating the returns to saving; for example abolishing the taxation of capital gains.

The Tax Foundation estimates that, once all reforms are fully phased in, North Carolina’s overall business tax climate ranking will be 13th best in the country. According to the 2016 index, North Carolina is now ranked as the 15th most attractive business tax climate.

Model Resolution on Regulatory Overcriminalization

In the last two years, academics and scholars of public policy have identified North Carolina as a state with an overly complex criminal code that can ensnare small businesses, farmers, and individuals who unknowingly fail to comply with regulatory rules. In 2014, Professor Jeff Welty of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government published an article in the North Carolina Law Review, “Overcriminalization in North Carolina”; and James Copland and Isaac Gorodetski, directors respectively of the Center for Legal Policy and the Center for State and Local Leadership at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, published a primer, “Overcriminalizing the Old North State.”

The John Locke Foundation has a long-standing interest in the Map Act, which we have criticized for being “inefficient, unfair, and unnecessary.” We have repeatedly urged the General Assembly to repeal or reform it. We have also taken a keen interest in Kirby v. NCDOT and in the legal and constitutional issues that it raises.

This report is an attempt to identify the scope and cost of regulations in the state of North Carolina. The state’s record is mixed in terms of regulatory burden. One prominent index ranks North Carolina fifth in the nation when it comes to business friendliness. In contrast, the John Locke Foundation’s “First in Freedom Index” ranks North Carolina 36th in “regulatory freedom.”

This paper therefore proposes a state-based REINS Act as a key sunrise provision to prevent adding unnecessary and harmful regulations to the state’s regulatory burden. It describes aspects of a REINS Act for North Carolina.

This study surveys North Carolina’s most populous cities and examines how each conducts economic development in its jurisdiction. Collectively, they entered into 238 economic development contracts worth more than $65 million over the five-year period. Actual payments, however, totaled $20.2 million.

For fiscal year 2015-16, the General Fund budget will rise 3.1 percent to $21.7 billion, below the combined rates of population growth and inflation. The following year, the budget will have an overall increase of less than one-percent.

By The Numbers provides information on how much local government costs in every city and county in North Carolina.