I dunno, I think I have a better sense of income distribution across the states than I do of taxes across the states, so I found the list non-useless. Is it everything I ever wanted to know? No, but it is more information than I had before. barfo
Hawaii is down (or up?) to the 5th spot. Vermont's 1st, NY's 2nd, Connecticut's 3rd, and Maryland's 4th. I didn't go off of Forbes listing though, I got it off the Tax Foundation's site which takes into consideration per capita income.
OK, if we then assume that taxes in Oregon are not as high as some of us think (it still may be, but various statistical averages say otherwise), then should Oregon also add a sales tax or raise the income tax?
These stats are per capita, which means they divide the sums by the number of residents (man, woman, child). When divided by employed person, California just became #1 worst with the new taxes they just passed. Something like $11K per employed person.
Yeah, I really wonder about Oregon. At present I'm in Vancouver, but my property taxes were 100% higher in Oregon, I paid a full 8% income tax + all the other taxes... It's just hard to believe that Oregon is supposedly such a cheap state to live, tax-wise.
I don't buy into judging a states economic standing by total taxes and per capita income. IMO, the best stat is overall cost of living which takes into consideration food prices, housing, transportation, housing, utilities, etc. http://ded.mo.gov/researchandplanning/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm Unlike with taxes, you can get a lot more in depth when a COL calculator because you can also compare cities, counties, area codes, regions, etc. For example, if I make $35,000 dollars a year and I move from Wichita to Honolulu were my salarie goes up to $40,351 I would still lose $18,525 in disposable income because the slight pay increase wouldn't make up for all the other increases in housing, food, taxes, etc. http://swz.salary.com/costoflivingwizard/layoutscripts/coll_start.asp That's a pretty basic calulator, there is a pretty in depth one somewhere that shows a comparison of all the data factors.
California is a damn disgrace. We have the 10th largest GDP of countries in the world, many people making incredible amounts of money... some of the highest tax rates in the country... and our budget is an absolute mess. It is a perfect example of why we can't rely on raising taxes to balance the budget. A perfect example that when the government raises taxes, they simply assume they have more money for NEW spending instead of making cuts to balance budgets.
