quote:
Originally posted by inteller
um, you can't use both state average income and nationwide average income to arrive at the same rankings. they are either using one or the other, and no where do they say.
Sure you can. The "tax burden" is the average tax rate for each state individually, Oklahoma is 27.8%. If you aggregate the data for all 50 states, you can get an average tax rate for the nation (32.7%).
Some taxes, like property and sales tax, are generally flat rates across the entire population. But I suspect that Conan is absolutely correct. Connecticut has higher tax rates in large part because more residents, proportionally, are in higher income tax brackets. You can tell when you look at the federal rate. It varies from state to state, even though every American is taxed according to the same formula. So, the only explanation remaining is that average incomes are higher, which throws more people into higher tax brackets.
I'm not really sure what that proves, other than poor people pay less taxes.
Oklahoma is not the poorest state, however. And we still have the lowest taxes.
