Taxable Talk

The Tax Foundation released its 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index today. Last year, I was a California resident; in the 2012 Index, California ranked 48th out of 50 states. I now reside in Nevada, which ranks 3rd out of the 50 states. In this case, 3rd is third best. Here are the top ten:

1. Wyoming
2. South Dakota
3. Nevada
4. Alaska
5. Florida
6. Washington
7. New Hampshire
8. Montana
9. Texas
10. Utah

And the bottom ten:
41. Maryland
42. Iowa
43. Wisconsin
44. North Carolina
45. Minnesota
46. Rhode Island
47. Vermont
48. California
49. New Jersey
50. New York

This just a listing based on taxes. If we added in regulations, California might even fall to 49. (Based on what I know of New York, it would be difficult for the Bronze Golden State to hit bottom.) States showing the best improvement were Michigan (which went from 18 to 12) and Maine (from 37 to 30). Michigan is especially notable because its corporate ranking went from 49th to 7th!

Taxes and regulations matter. On Monday, the Tax Foundation released a map showing annual income lost and gained due to interstate migration in 2009:

Shock of shocks, New York and New Jersey are in the top ten of loss of income back in 2009. Michigan was worst off (remember, Michigan’s tax system was horrible); Montana was best followed by South Carolina. Low tax states generally did quite well, with Florida #3, Wyoming #4, and Arizona #5.

Returning to the state business tax climate, taxes matter. Kudos to the Tax Foundation for their vital work. As the Tax Foundation stated in their report,

Taxes matter to business. Business taxes affect business decisions, job creation and retention, plant location, competitiveness, the transparency of the tax system, and the long-term health of a state’s economy. Most importantly, taxes diminish profits…

States do not enact tax changes (increases or cuts) in a vacuum. Every tax law will in some way change a state’s competitive position relative
to its immediate neighbors, its geographic region, and even globally…Entrepreneurial states can take advantage of the tax increases of their neighbors to lure businesses out of high-tax states

Tags: Business.Climate, Tax.Foundation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2012 at 8:32 pm and is filed under California, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.