As Tax Day (April 18th) looms, we are once again reminded of how deeply the government reaches into our pockets. However, as Bloomberg details, there is one way to reduce your income tax burden – Switch states. Federal tax rates are the same no matter where you live, but state income taxes are all over the place.
Some have progressive tax systems, where top earners pay a higher marginal rate on their taxable income than those who make less.
Eight states have a flat tax, applying the same percentage levy across all incomes.
Three states actually have regressive income taxes, where the mega-wealthy pay a lower percentage of their taxable income than those in the middle.
And nine states have no income tax at all.
See how your state stacks up.
This chart lets you compare the effective state tax rates of a household earning the U.S. median of $36,841 in adjusted gross income with a household earning $1,860,848, just enough to enter the top 0.1%.
Finally, as we noted previously, if you hate taxes, you are far from alone. According to NBC News, here are some of the things that Americans would rather do than pay taxes…
Six percent would rather sell a kidney, eight percent would rather name their first-born “Taxes,” and 11 percent would rather spend three years cleaning the bathrooms at noro-torious Chipotle.
Of course our system was never intended to be like this anyway. Our founders hated taxes, and they fought a very bitter war to escape the yoke of oppressive taxation. During his very first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson clearly expressed what he thought about taxes…
“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
Why couldn’t we have listened to him?
via http://ift.tt/1Yuz33R Tyler Durden