State and local tax burden visualized

For two decades the Tax Foundation has estimated the combined state and local tax burden for all the states. I’ve created an interactive visualization that lets you compare states and see trends in rank over time.

In its publication, the Tax Foundation explains:

For each state, we compute this measure of tax burden by totaling the amount of state and local taxes paid by state residents to both their own and other governments and then divide these totals by each state’s total income. We not only make this calculation for the most recent year, but also for earlier years due to the fact that income and tax revenue data are periodically revised by government agencies.

Our goal here is to move the focus from the tax collector to the taxpayer. We aim to find what percentage of state income residents are paying in state and local taxes and whether those taxes are paid to their own state or to others.

The most recent version of the report is located at Annual State-Local Tax Burden Ranking (2010) – New York Citizens Pay the Most, Alaska the Least.

To use the visualization, click on any state from the map. To add states, use Ctrl+click. Use the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window. Data from Tax Foundation; visualization created using Tableau Public.