Think taxes are bad in Oregon?

[MARIS61]

Here are the 10 states with the highest taxes, including property, individual income, sales, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, motor vehicles, hunting and fishing, motor fuels, death and gift taxes, as well as insurance premiums. The per capita tax was derived by adding up all the taxes and dividing the total by the number of citizens.

1. Vermont, $3,861
2. Hawaii, $3,856
3. Connecticut, $3,596
4. Minnesota, $3,203
5. New Jersey, $3,024
6. New York, $3,019
7. Massachusetts, $2,953
8. Washington, $2,553
9. Wyoming, $2,357
10. Pennsylvania, $2,223

Source: Forbes, Matt Woolsey (03/30/2009)

 

[blazerboy30]

Here are the 10 states with the highest taxes, including property, individual income, sales, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, motor vehicles, hunting and fishing, motor fuels, death and gift taxes, as well as insurance premiums. The per capita tax was derived by adding up all the taxes and dividing the total by the number of citizens.

1. Vermont, $3,861
2. Hawaii, $3,856
3. Connecticut, $3,596
4. Minnesota, $3,203
5. New Jersey, $3,024
6. New York, $3,019
7. Massachusetts, $2,953
8. Washington, $2,553
9. Wyoming, $2,357
10. Pennsylvania, $2,223

Source: Forbes, Matt Woolsey (03/30/2009)

The data is meaningless without knowing how much those people made. I am pretty sure Connecticut is always near the top for having the highest average household income. So it would make sense to see them near the top of the taxes-paid list.

How about the states ranked by percentage instead of absolute dollars?

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

That's kind of a stupid way to do it. Add up all taxes divided by the number of citizens?

For this to be a true reflection, that would have to assumes a flat tax rate. this will be really skewed in a state of high income earners.

 

[barfo]

That's kind of a stupid way to do it. Add up all taxes divided by the number of citizens?

For this to be a true reflection, that would have to assumes a flat tax rate. this will be really skewed in a state of high income earners.

The tax paid per capita is a perfectly reasonable thing to compute. It might not be the data you are most interested in seeing, but there isn't anything "stupid" about it.

barfo

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

The tax paid per capita is a perfectly reasonable thing to compute. It might not be the data you are most interested in seeing, but there isn't anything "stupid" about it.

barfo

It is stupid. I don't think its an accurate reflection of the taxation when the results can be skewed by a few individuals at the top, who pay a majority of the taxes overall.

 

[MARIS61]

That's kind of a stupid way to do it. Add up all taxes divided by the number of citizens?

For this to be a true reflection, that would have to assumes a flat tax rate. this will be really skewed in a state of high income earners.

Yeah, that must be why Hawaii, Minnesota and Wyoming are in the top 10.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

Yeah, that must be why Hawaii, Minnesota and Wyoming are in the top 10.

Why, what about those states?

 

[44Thrilla]

I want to see the bottom 10.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

I want to see the bottom 10.

just look for the 10 states with the lowest per capita income.

 

[blazerboy30]

The tax paid per capita is a perfectly reasonable thing to compute. It might not be the data you are most interested in seeing, but there isn't anything "stupid" about it.

barfo

It is a stupid thing to compute and use as proof in a thread titled "Think taxes are bad in Oregon?"

 

[44Thrilla]

just look for the 10 states with the lowest per capita income.

Yeah, they are probably similar, but I know some states like Florida and New Hampshire don't have any sales tax, so they would probably be down there.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

Yeah, they are probably similar, but I know some states like Florida and New Hampshire don't have any sales tax, so they would probably be down there.

I don't think this really matters. most of the taxes are based on total tax collected divided by the number of people.

the higher the per capita income is, the higher the per capita tax collected will be.

 

[barfo]

Maris, does that data include federal taxes, or only state taxes?

barfo

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I'm not convinced those stats are really representative of what people pay in taxes.

 

[Anima]

Ranked by the Tax foundation
In its annual report on state and local tax burdens, the Tax Foundation says that “state and local taxes will consume a record-setting 11% of the nation’s income in 2007.” Below are the 10 states in which the state-local tax burden as a percentage of income is lowest (see the Top 10 list in the May 14 Human Events for the 10 highest tax burdens). The Tax Foundation compares state and local tax burdens by “combining the different levels of government, counting every tax and comparing those totals” to a measure of income. The entire report is available at www.TaxFoundation.org.


1. Alaska -- State-Local Tax Burden: 6.6%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $2,729
Per Capita Income: $41,469

2. New Hampshire -- State-Local Tax Burden: 8.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,504
Per Capita Income: $43,745

3. Tennessee -- State-Local Tax Burden: 8.5%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,054
Per Capita Income: $35,960

4. Delaware -- State-Local Tax Burden: 8.8%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,804
Per Capita Income: $43,471

5. Alabama -- State-Local Tax Burden: 8.8%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,090
Per Capita Income: $35,007

6. Oklahoma -- State-Local Tax Burden: 9.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,248
Per Capita Income: $36,077

7. South Dakota -- State-Local Tax Burden: 9.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,435
Per Capita Income: $38,072

8. Texas -- State-Local Tax Burden: 9.3%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,533
Per Capita Income: $38,005

9. Wyoming -- State-Local Tax Burden: 9.5%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $4,340
Per Capita Income: $45,881

10. Montana -- State-Local Tax Burden: 9.7%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,353
Per Capita Income: $34,415

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21064

 

[Denny Crane]

The data is meaningless without knowing how much those people made. I am pretty sure Connecticut is always near the top for having the highest average household income. So it would make sense to see them near the top of the taxes-paid list.

How about the states ranked by percentage instead of absolute dollars?

The median income on Maui when I lived there was $28K.

 

[barfo]

It is a stupid thing to compute and use as proof in a thread titled "Think taxes are bad in Oregon?"

Aside from the fact that he didn't include Oregon in the listing, I don't see why it is stupid.

barfo

 

[barfo]

[data from the Tax Foundation

Thanks for the links, Anima.

Oregon is #11 on that list. The 11th lowest state tax burden. So the answer to the question posed in the thread is "nope, not relative to most other states".

barfo

 

[barfo]

I'm not convinced those stats are really representative of what people pay in taxes.

They aren't representative. They are averages.

barfo

 

[Ed O]

Aside from the fact that he didn't include Oregon in the listing, I don't see why it is stupid.

It's "stupid" because it's irrelevant to the thread title.

It's interesting at some level, because it shows how much government consumes per citizen in any given state, but it's irrelevant because it doesn't take into consideration how much money is made per citizen.

Without normalizing for income levels, you potentially get a mixed bag of poor states that tax the hell out of its citizens and wealthy states that take a smaller cut.

Taxes aren't "bad" or "good" unless one looks at things from a taxpayer's perspective, and leaving the income out of the equation renders this list incapable of giving us that perspective.

Ed O.

 

[barfo]

It's "stupid" because it's irrelevant to the thread title.

It's interesting at some level, because it shows how much government consumes per citizen in any given state, but it's irrelevant because it doesn't take into consideration how much money is made per citizen.

Without normalizing for income levels, you potentially get a mixed bag of poor states that tax the hell out of its citizens and wealthy states that take a smaller cut.

Taxes aren't "bad" or "good" unless one looks at things from a taxpayer's perspective, and leaving the income out of the equation renders this list incapable of giving us that perspective.

Ed O.

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

 

[Entity]

Wow, there's a state out there that takes more of your money than Hawaii?

 

[Anima]

Wow, there's a state out there that takes more of your money than Hawaii?

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.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

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?

 

[Denny Crane]

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.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

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.

 

[Anima]

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.

 

[blazerboy30]

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.

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.