Individual Californians are shouldering an increasing percentage of the state's general fund, while the share of revenue from corporate income taxes has declined, according to a new analysis by a think tank in Sacramento. Over time, the burden of paying for public services has, in a fairly dramatic way, shifted from businesses to individuals,'' said Jean Ross, director of the nonprofit California Budget Project in Sacramento. Ross went back more than 40 years to track how much the state derived from its three main revenue sources: personal income tax, sales tax and corporate income tax. Over time, income taxes paid by individuals have risen to fill half of the state's coffers, while corporate income taxes have fallen to about 10 percent of the take. Dan Bucks, executive director of the Multistate Tax Commission, said the decline in corporate taxes as a share of state coffers is occurring in all 47 states that levy some form of business or corporate tax. "Our data indicate that ... corporate income taxes were 9.7 percent of state revenues in 1980 and 4.9 percent in 2002,'' he said. Personal income taxes -- levied in more than 40 states -- have also risen nationwide "in a virtually straight line,'' he said. Corporations have gotten better at sheltering income from both federal and state taxes. For instance, the General Accounting Office, watchdog agency of Congress, recently reported that more than 60 percent of U.S. corporations paid no federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.

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