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Political battles about state taxation efforts regularly revolve around the argument that greater state effort will produce fiscal centralization. When fiscal centralization is examined, the focus is usually upon the degree of state dominance in directly providing services. This is the most visible form of centralization, and it is usually expressed as the state's proportion of total direct state-local expenditure, or the division of labor" in a state. Fiscal centralization is increasing in the states, though they retain considerable diversity in their actual paths of change.