BOSTON — Like death, people will go to great lengths to avoid taxes, even driving across state lines, according to a new survey that looks at the price states ultimately pay when they charge high sales and excise taxes.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a national bipartisan organization of state lawmakers, commissioned Price Waterhouse in Washington to do the survey.

The survey looked at two pairs of states with pronounced differences in their taxes: Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and Indiana and Illinois.

It concluded that New Hampshire enjoys most of the economic benefits in the phenomenon it calls “cross-border activity.” For the two midwestern states there was more give and take, though overall, Indiana came out ahead.

Indiana benefits at Illinois’ expense from favorable cross-border trade in tobacco and gasoline; Illinois benefits in the sale of wine and liquor.

The survey also found that price incentives were key to determining how trade in a particular commodity will flow between neighboring states. And tax differentials play a large role in determining which state will offer those commodities at the lower retail price.

The findings are no surprise, but they suggest that lawmakers need to change their perspective when they set out to raise taxes, said economist Paul Lawrence, author of the survey report.

“Under certain circumstances … the borders of the states, in terms of the taxpayers, are not geographic borders,” Lawrence said in a telephone call from an office in Springfield, Va.

“Politicians tend not to think about neighboring states. But when people in Massachusetts raise their taxes to raise revenue, people in New Hampshire end up raising money.

“If I were a state legislator, I would think, do the circumstances in this report exist in my state and if I vote to raise taxes, will it have the opposite effect — of filling coffers in the (next) state?” Lawrence said.

The commodities surveyed were gasoline, wine and liquor and tobacco. The years examined were 1975 to 1988.

The two pairs of states were chosen because the results of their tax differences were most pronounced.

The phenomenon generally applies as well to states in which there are Indian reservations and military bases, where local excise and sales taxes don’t apply.

Massachusetts has a sales tax of 5 percent; New Hampshire has none. In 1988, New Hampshire’s excise tax on a cigarette carton was $1.70. In Massachusetts it was $2.60.

New Hampshire owns all liquor wholesale and retail businesses, keeping the revenue and selling the alcohol at lower prices than those found in Massachusetts.

In Illinois, fuel taxes came to 21 cents a gallon compared with 18 cents a gallon in Indiana. The tax on wine in Illinois was an estimated $1.13 a gallon compared to $1.47 a gallon in Indiana. Liquor taxes in Illinois were $3.80 a gallon against $4.68 in Indiana.