While taxpayers await another threatened veto of tax relief, a new analysis shows Kansas has the 12th highest tax burden in the nation.
The research by WalletHub and the Tax Policy Center is based on taxes paid as a share of total personal income. Researchers ranked each state’s sales and excise, property, and income taxes and combined the three results into an overall ranking.
At #12, Kansas lags behind neighboring states Nebraska (#15), Colorado (#24), Missouri (#35), and Oklahoma (#42) in taxing its residents.
Only New York, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, California, Utah, Illinois, and Hawaii have a higher tax burden than Kansas, according to the WalletHub research.
The study finds traditional “red states” have a lower tax burden than their “blue state” counterparts.
However, among the traditional high-tax states of New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Hawaii, among others, only Utah (#11) with its high individual income tax, stifles economic opportunity greater than Kansas among “red states.”
Duke University professor Xu Jiang offers advice to Kansas and other high-tax states to reduce the loss of private-sector jobs:
“The general belief among economists is that a low tax rate and a broad tax base (i.e., not many selective deductions, i.e., deductions that only apply to certain groups but not others) attract more residents and stimulate growth by increasing the tax base due to higher economic growth and more people generating income. The broad base also reduces tax avoidance behavior which both reduces state tax income and productive economic effort. Therefore, one thing local governments can do is lower tax rates and broaden the tax base, pretty much like what Texas and Florida are doing.”
