Today, increases in expenditures are creating tremendous strains on the financial resources of state and local governments. As these demands for services increase, the state and local governments continuously find their financial resources incapable of bending to meet these needs. Currently state and local governments together combined spend twice as much as the federal government to provide public services to the citizens. Education, roads, welfare, public health, hospitals, police, sanitation are all state and local responsibilities with the cost of providing these services falling primarily upon state and local sources of revenue. Consequently, state and local taxes have been raised almost to the saturation point and the bases of old taxes have had to be enlarged. / Master of Arts