• Highest marginal personal income tax rate
• Highest marginal corporate income tax rate
• Progressivity of the personal income tax system
• Property tax burden
• Sales tax burden
• Tax burden from all remaining taxes
• Estate tax/Inheritance tax (Yes or No)
• Recent Tax Policy Changes 2005-06
• Debt service as share of tax revenue
• Public employees per 10,000 residents (ed - Uh oh!!!)
• Quality of state legal system
• State minimum wage
• Workers’ Compensation costs
• Right-to-work state (Yes or No)
• Tax/Expenditure Limit• Education Freedom Index
Minnesota, on the other hand.....
The report also talks about population migration to and from the states and what the causes of this migration appears to be. This includes a cautionary tale to Minnesota (whose top corporate marginal tax rate is the 5th HIGHEST in the country) Legislators - INCLUDING Governor Pawlenty (who lately seems to think that increased regulation is a good thing)....
It takes a lot of public policy folly to persuade people to pack their bags and abandon California’s sunshine, 70-degree weather, scenic mountains, and beaches, but lately the politicians in Sacramento have proved themselves up to the task. The latest Census Bureau data indicate that in 2005, 239,416 more Californians followed Tiger Woods’s lead and left the state than moved in. That was also the case in 2003 and 2004. The native-born outmigration flows have become so systemic that the cost to rent a U-Haul trailer to move from Los Angeles to Boise, Idaho is $2,090—or some six times more than the cost of moving in the opposite direction.23 What’s gone wrong with the Golden State? A big part of the story is a tax and regulatory culture in Sacramento that treats rich people as if they were cash dispensing ATM machines.
The cost for businesses of complying with California’s rules, regulations, and paperwork is more than twice as high as other Western states.24
Perhaps this story is a sign of the times: One of the leading companies that manufactures surfboards, a quintessential California firm, closed operations in California due to fear of “fines, civil lawsuits, and even time in prison.”25
But the real growth killer is California’s steeply “progressive” income tax with a 10.3 percent rate applied to high-income residents—the highest in the nation outside New York City. The richest 10 percent of earners pay almost 75 percent of the income tax burden in the state. And most of these “evil rich” are small business owners, i.e. the people who create the jobs.26
Overtaxation and a nanny government that wants to dictate EVERY ASPECT of your life are a sure fire way of chasing people away from the best of weather and we certainly do not have the best of weather here in Minnesota - especially in January!
Hello, St. Paul????? Is anybody listening??????
Cross posted at Ladies Logic and True North because I have nothing better to do with my time!
