Large corporations looking to reduce their tax bills would do well to consider North Carolina, according to a new report published by the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.

The report ranked the Tar Heel State seventh out of the 50 states in tax burden on long-established corporations and 13th for new ones. Particularly benefitting North Carolina in the rankings were the state’s relatively low property taxes and the amount of incentives available to qualifying businesses.

The results are published in a new report, “Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business,” examining corporate tax burdens across the 50 states. For mature firms, Wyoming scored the best and Pennsylvania the worst. For newly established firms, Nebraska came in at No. 1 and Hawaii took up the rear of the pack.

“This represents the most extensive comparison of real-world corporate tax costs across the 50 states that’s ever been undertaken,” said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, said in a conference call with reporters. “We are really zeroing in on the firm level, the bottom-line question that we often get from business-owners: ‘Yeah, we like your other studies, but at the end of the day, how much will my company pay in taxes?’”

To rank corporate tax costs, the Tax Foundation created two example locations — a large metro and a mid-sized city — in each state and measured the tax environment. To calculate the score, the group used taxes particularly meaningful to businesses organized as Subchapter C corporations. In addition to corporate income taxes, these included gross receipts and franchise taxes, property taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and sales taxes.

The study also factored in the most common types of tax incentives that states offer, such as tax credits for job creation or research and development expenditures.

North Carolina ranked third-lowest in taxes for mature distribution centers located in mid-sized cities. “This operation has a total effective tax rate … of 20.6 percent, which is 33 percent below the national average,” the study found. “This favorable ranking is due almost entirely to low property tax burdens.”

The Tar Heel State ranked 20th for mature research-and-development firms in metros, seventh for new corporate headquarters in metros, and 24th for new research-and-development firms in metros.

Fergus Hodgson, director of fiscal policy studies for the John Locke Foundation, said that the new report provided an interesting comparison of the state and local tax burdens facing large corporations, but was not designed to evaluate state taxation of business and investment in general.

“For example, personal income taxes provide half of the state’s General Fund revenue and apply to income from sole proprietorships, partnerships, and limited liability companies,” Hodgson said. “The new report doesn’t look at these kinds of firms, which represent a growing share of firms doing business in North Carolina.”

In fact, on Jan. 25 the Tax Foundation released the latest of its studies on state business tax climates, which takes into account a wider array of tax policies that can affect a state’s climate for business and economic growth, including tax complexity, tax discrimination, and tax rates on consumer spending and small-business income. For 2012 North Carolina ranked 44th in the nation on this measure, alongside such states as Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and California.

“Because the ‘Location Matters’ report only ranks states by taxes paid, not according to differences in state tax codes, it is silent on the issue of tax complexity and the compliance costs associated with it,” Hodgson said. “But at the same time it does serve to highlight the wide disparity in corporate tax burdens across different industries.”

Hodge said the study should be valuable for governors, legislators, and economic development officials “as they explore how to improve their tax systems and make them more competitive.” It’s also an effective tool for corporate managers as they consider where to locate new operations, he said.

David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.