Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Good cheese aside, be glad you don’t live in Vermont.
Residents there will devote an average of 14.1 percent of their incomes to state and local taxes this year, the highest burden of any state, according to a new report by the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Pennsylvania ranked 24th costliest, with a tax bite of 10.8 percent. That was slightly lower than the national average of 11 percent – an all-time high that eclipsed the previous record of 10.9 percent set in 2005.
Alaska ranked as the most tax-friendly state, with 6.6 percent of income going toward state and local taxes, the foundation said. Best known for its annual Tax Freedom Day proclamation, the foundation measured all types of state and local taxes, including income, sales, property and excise taxes.
Besides Vermont, other states with relatively high tax tabs were Maine, followed by New York, Rhode Island and Ohio.
Because of the robust economy “people are paying more taxes – particularly those in states with graduated income tax rates,” said Curtis Dubay, author of the study.
Because comparing straight dollar amounts could be misleading, the foundation calculated a state’s tax burden by dividing per capita taxes into per capita income.
For example, a tax tab of $4,000 in Mississippi, where per-capita income is about $29,000, equates to a much higher tax burden than the same $4,000 in Connecticut, where per-capita income is about $55,000.
In Pennsylvania, per-capita income was $40,942, slightly higher than the nation’s per-capita income of $40,348.
Last week, the Tax Foundation announced that this year’s Tax Freedom Day would arrive April 30, two days later than last year. That’s the day that Americans have worked long enough to cover their federal, state and local tax bills for the year.