Four years after billionaire moguls such as Amazons Jeff Bezos and Microsofts Steve Ballmer funded a campaign to defeat an income tax ballot measure, Washington now makes low-income families pay seven times the effective tax rate that the rich pay. Thats right, those in the poorest 20 percent of Washington households pay on average 16.8 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while Washingtons 1-percenters pay just 2.4 percent of their income. Like many of the other regressive tax states, Washington imposes no personal income tax all. The problem with our state tax systems is that we are asking far more of those who can afford the least, concludes ITEMs state director Wiehe.By contrast, the states identified as having the smallest gap in effective tax rates are California, Delaware, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont -- all Democratic strongholds and all relying more heavily on progressively structured income taxes. Montana is the only Republican-leaning state ITEP researchers identify among the states with the least regressive tax rates.Of course, if you arent poor, you may be reading this and thinking that these trends have no real-world impact on your life.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 23:38:37 +0000