Who Pays?

http://www.itep.org/whopays/

Major tax overhauls are on the agenda in a record number of states, and “Who Pays?” documents in state-by-state detail the precise distribution of state income taxes, sales and excise taxes and property taxes paid by each income group as of January 2013. It is a critical baseline against which future proposals can be measured.

Most significantly, the report concludes that all states have regressive tax systems that ask more from low- and middle-income families than from the wealthiest. It also finds:

- The average overall effective state and local tax rates by income group nationwide are 11.1 percent for the bottom 20 percent, 9.4 percent for the middle 20 percent and 5.6 percent for the top 1 percent

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States praised as “low tax” are often high tax states for low and middle income families.

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http://www.itep.org/pdf/whopayses.pdf

States’ consumption tax structures are highly regressive with an average 7 percent rate for the poor, a 4.6 percent rate for middle incomes, and a 0.9 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers. Because food is one of the largest expenses for a low-income family, taxing food is a particularly regressive tax policy; five of the ten most regressive states tax food at the state or local level. Excise taxes on things like gasoline, cigarettes or beer take about 1.6 percent of the income of the poorest families, 0.8 percent from middle income families and 0.1 percent of income from the most well-off.

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