10mo ago

Lowest-taxed group in each state of the United States

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I'm confused, WA has no income tax, OR has high income tax... As someone who moved from WA to OR, got a raise, and ended up with smaller paychecks I can attest that this doesn't represent everyone accurately
- This chart is not displaying income taxes. It is displaying the share of all taxes contributed by income brackets.
  
  For anyone not reading between the lines, taxes like sales taxes and property taxes are designed to disproportionately target those with lower income (i.e., regressive), while income tax is mostly supposed to target higher incomes (i.e. progressive).
  
  And Washington actually has the most regressive tax structure in the US because of these factors.
  
  this is the problem with illinois which has a fixed flat income tax in its constitution.
  
  So the red states actually have a less wealthy 1%, and therefore less inequality.
  This is a wildly misleading chart at first glance.
  
  Uh, the thing about percentages, as in "the top 1%", is that they are proportional. It doesn't matter if one state has fewer billionaires than another state, that's not what the chart is displaying.
  
  If the average income tax of the top 1% isn't 20 times higher than the average tax of any of the 20% groups, then they'll be paying less overall tax. Because there's 20 times more people in the bigger group.
  Or it could be showing that those states have unfair tax rules, which is undoubtedly the case for some of them.
  This chart is honestly completely meaningless, because there's no way to know which of those two conditions exist.
  It's lies, damn lies, and statistics, poured into a rage-bait map.
  Edit: However, I would be intrigued to know how the middle 20% managed to pay the least tax in Oregon.
  
  This chart is honestly completely meaningless, because there’s no way to know which of those two conditions exist.
  You could read the accompanying article.
  
  Or even just the text on the chart.
- WA has no income tax, but it does have a state level sales tax. Low income people spend a larger portion of their income on purchases which results in a much higher tax rate.
  
  States like California have both high sales tax and State income tax, so that's definitely a worse outcome.

176 comments