From The Tax Foundation (via Club for Growth.)
I live in one of the fifteen highest sales tax rate states, and the local tax rate here is much higher than my state's average. Because the voters in my state also overwhelmingly decided that a great way to raise tax revenue would be to prey on the poor (read: lottery), I think we can expect that sales tax rate to rise.
Monday, November 17, 2008
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9 comments:
My state is #3. Go me.
/grumble
I thought sales tax was high when I lived in Minnesota. But they didn't tax clothing sales then, either.
Now I'm in Missouri, and we're even higher than Arkansas. yippe.
At least I'm not Brian. :)
One thing about OR (purple) and WA (brown and #2--heh), though, is that OR has a state income tax but no sales tax, and WA has a sales tax but no income tax. ID (white) next door has both. I've lived in all 3 of those states and much prefer sales tax over income tax, especially since I now live in WA just across the river from OR and can make any big purchases (not cars) over there.
I agree that it is nice when a state balances it out somewhat by not having one of the major taxes (sales, income, or property.)
Sadly my state has all three, has half rate sales tax on food, and even applies sales tax to services and used goods!
Really, a state needs to balance all three major types of taxes so that the tax burden is well balanced. A sales tax is heavily regressive, burdening the middle class and poor more than anyone. Property tax affects those with property most, usually wealthy and middle class, also the elderly. Income tax can be tailored, either as a flat tax (regressive) or a progressive tax.
(I too live in #7 MO)
Agreed that sales tax is the most regressive. John, here's something that will make your blood boil, as it did mine: Our town voted in an extra 1% sales tax to build a stadium! Let's force the poor to pay for a stadium that they probably can't even afford to go to. Geeze.
Yeah, St. Louis City and County, rather than voting for a tax increase instead took out loans and offered the Cardinals low/no tax for several years to build them a new stadium (demolishing the original stadium in the process) just because they threatened to move across the river. Paying interest on a loan to lose money is a pretty idiotic idea IMO and we still have a giant hole in the ground where the old stadium was because the developer pulled out after the economy tanked.
The free market solution is that if the poor don't like the tax rates, or paying for a stadium, they can move.
From the conservative view, people are poor because they make bad choices. Like playing the lottery.
Government has no business interfering with how wealth is redistributed.
Someone sharp and astute and well-connected got to build that stadium and make (we assume) a nice profit.
The fact that the state forcibly took that money out of the pockets of the poor and moved it into the pockets of big business is irrelevent to the invisible hand.
Government has no business interfering with how wealth is redistributed.
and
The fact that the state forcibly took that money out of the pockets of the poor and moved it into the pockets of big business is irrelevent to the invisible hand.
You realize that these statements are contradictory, yes? You realize that government confiscating tax money and handing it out to selected people is pretty much the antithesis of the free market and capitalism, yes?
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