As a public service the Research Council prepared digests of staff reports to the Michigan State Tax Study Committee. In the late 1920s and early 1930s a number of states enacted chain store taxes. This was the period of rapid development of chain stores. This analysis found that chain store taxes are essentially discriminatory taxes that add considerably to the overhead of some stores, impose lighter burdens on others and none at all on still others. While chain store taxes impose discriminatory burdens on chain stores, the burdens do not appear to be of sufficient weight to curb chains or seriously interfere with their operations. Chain taxes are not accomplishing their professed goal of regulating the large dominant national chains. The taxes are likely to prove more burdensome on the local chain with a large number of small units in the taxing state.