As tax season neared a close, a study by the personal finance website WalletHub itemized the tax friendliness of the 50 states, finding that tax rates alone don't tell the whole story.
To get a more practical picture of taxes' impact, researchers measured each state's tax burden — the proportion of personal income residents pay toward state and local taxes. This is on top of the federal government's take.
The tax burden varies across the country. In many states, the picture is clear: New York, for example, has by far the highest individual income tax burden and third highest property taxes in the U.S., resulting in a tax burden of 13.6%. In contrast, two states impose no individual income tax, and their residents pay less than 6% of their income in state and local taxes.
But true tax-friendliness is often less straightforward. Hawaii, for example, has the lowest effective property tax rate in the U.S. — 0.27%, as WalletHub previously reported. But due to high property values, these taxes take 2.57% of Hawaiians' annual income.
It's worth noting that states with no income tax often find revenue in other ways. In one of these states, Nevada, sales taxes top 8% in some cities, putting the state near the middle of the tax-burden ranking.
To determine which states tax their residents least and most aggressively, WalletHub collected data from the Tax Policy Center as of March 4 and compared property tax, individual income tax and total sales and excise tax as a share of personal income in each of the 50 states.
Researchers then and added the results to obtain the overall tax burden for each state.
See the gallery for the 15 states with the lightest tax burdens on their residents, according to WalletHub.
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