Mitchell: State Income Tax Rankings

Dan Mitchell, Ranking State Income Taxes:

Motivated in part by an excellent graphic that I shared in 2016, I put together a five-column ranking of state personal income tax systems in 2018.

Given some changes that have since occurred, it’s time for a new version. The first two columns are self explanatory and columns 3 and 5 are based on whether the top tax rate on households is less than 5 percent (“Low Rate”) or more than 8 percent (“Class Warfare”).

Column 4, needless to say, is for states where the top tax rate in between 5-8 percent.

The good news is that the above table is better than the one I created in 2018. Thanks to tax competition between states, there have been some improvements in tax policy.