RewardExpert Releases Report Analyzing States with the Best and Worst Value for Taxpayers’ Dollars

The three states that offer the most value for resident tax dollars are:

• Alaska – Alaska tops our list of states whose residents get the most value for their tax dollars. State and local government expenditures on infrastructure and services exceed tax revenues by nearly 300%, with per capita expenditures surpassing per capita tax revenues by an amount equal to 12.38% of the average Alaskan’s income.
• New Mexico – Second-place New Mexico’s per capita state and local government spending exceeds tax revenues payable by individual residents at a ratio of nearly 2 to 1; spending $3,395 more per New Mexican than it receives on a per capita basis.
• Wyoming – Wyoming collects enough in sales and property taxes (sixth and seventh-place in per-capita terms) to offset its lack of personal or corporate income taxes. State and local governments in Wyoming offer net benefits to taxpayers amounting to a yearly bonus of 5.24% of the average resident’s income.

The three states that offer the least value for taxpayer dollars are:

• Hawaii – Coming in dead last in terms of the value of its residents’ tax dollars is the state of Hawaii, which is the only state whose residents pay more in taxes per capita than state and local governments spend with -0.16% tax ROI; negative bang for their bucks, as it were.
• North Dakota – North Dakotans pay more per capita in taxes than residents of any other state, coming in second only to residents of the District of Columbia. And while North Dakota state and local governments spend slightly more per capita than per capita tax receipts, this amounts to a paltry 0.11% of the statewide average per capita income.
• Connecticut – Connecticut is distinguished by its third-highest per capita tax burden, and for its proportion of state and local government revenue made up by taxes, which is second to none at 61.78%.

“Taxes do not disappear into a bureaucratic black hole,” says Shteyn, “but rather help pay for valuable government operated or administered services, and to invest in infrastructure, public safety, and essential social safety-net programs, such as unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, that tend to get taken for granted by many of us. Nothing is certain but death and taxes, as they say, and if we have to face these inevitabilities it’s helps to know where you’re getting the most out of your money.”

RewardExpert used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of State and Local Government Finances to calculate the sum total of all expenditures that benefits individual taxpayers and calculated per capita government spending.  The value of residents’ tax dollars was calculated as the difference between per capita spending and per capita tax revenues collected, excluding corporate income taxes. All fifty states were ranked according to the amount by which government spending exceeded taxes collected on a per capita basis.

For further information and to view the full report, visit the RewardExpert website.