This year's federal tax filing deadline of April 18 is quickly approaching, and Americans generally pay some mixture of federal, local, and in most cases, state taxes. But the tax burden of some states significantly outpaces others, data show.
WalletHub, a personal finance website, released a report this week analyzing total tax burden by state. Tax burden is defined as the proportion of a person's income that goes toward taxes.
It measured a combination of the proportion of property tax, income tax and sales tax that people paid. These were the states with the highest and lowest tax burdens.
Highest tax burdens
- New York - 12.47%
- Hawaii - 12.31%
- Maine - 11.14%
- Vermont - 10.28%
- Connecticut - 9.83%
- New Jersey - 9.76%
- Maryland - 9.44%
- Minnesota - 9.41%
- Illinois - 9.38%
- Iowa - 9.15%
Lowest tax burdens
- Alaska - 5.06%
- Delaware - 6.12%
- New Hampshire - 6.14%
- Tennessee - 6.22%
- Florida - 6.33%
- Wyoming - 6.42%
- South Dakota - 6.69%
- Montana - 6.93%
- Missouri - 7.11%
- Oklahoma - 7.12%
When broken down by category, the states with the highest burden for property tax were Maine (5.33%), Vermont (4.98%) and New Hampshire (4.94%), while the lowest were Alabama (1.39%), Tennessee (1.66%) and Arkansas (1.68%).
The states with the highest burden for income tax are New York (4.72%), Maryland (4.21%) and Oregon (3.62%). There are seven states with no income tax – Nevada, Washington, South Dakota, Florida, Wyoming, Alaska and Texas.
The states with the highest sales tax burden are Hawaii (6.71%), Washington, (5.66%) and New Mexico (5.62%), while the states with the lowest sales tax burden are New Hampshire (1.07%), Delaware (1.09%) and Oregon (1.11%).
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