Study: Montana tax system fairest among states
The personal finance website Wallet Hub has ranked Montana’s state and local tax system as the fairest in the country.
Wallet Hub conducted a nationally representative online survey that asked 1,050 people what they think a fair state and local tax system looks like. Then the website’s analysts compared what Americans want with the real structure of tax systems in the 50 states.
Montana also was rated as first in tax fairness by liberals as well as conservatives, according to the Wallet Hub report.
“It’s obviously encouraging for us,” state Revenue Director Mike Kadas said Monday.
“From the perspective of our own structure, what really underlies this is a roughly proportional property tax system, a mildly progressive income tax system and no sales tax. It is the sales tax that adds the regressivity into an overall tax structure.”
Sales taxes generally are regarded as regressive because poorer people pay a higher share of their income on sales taxes on items than wealthy people do.
Kadas said the states that rely on sales tax income tend to be ranked lower in the Wallet Hub fairness study.
Five states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — don’t have a statewide general sales tax. Oregon was the runner-up to Montana in the overall ratings, while Delaware ranked fourth and New Hampshire 12th, while Alaska was 32nd.
Tax analysts often say that states should have what they call a three-legged tax stool, with income, property and sales taxes each making up a leg of the stool.
Kadas said natural resource taxes represent the third stool of the Montana tax system replacing a sales tax.
“While they aren’t nearly what they used to be, they are generally not a source of revenue that’s a burden to everyday citizens,” the Revenue Department director said, referring to taxes on natural resources.
Kadas said what was probably most striking about the Wallet Hub study was “they asked in a statistical way what is the fairest way to do it, rather than asked special interest groups.”
Wallet Hub’s study ranking Montana top in tax fairness follows a separate report by the Tax Foundation last fall that rated Montana as having the seventh best tax climate for businesses in its annual ratings.
In Wallet Hub’s study, the group conducted an online survey of 1,050 Americans intended to be nationally representative by age and gender, with substantial variations across income levels, racial and ethnic categories and political beliefs.
The survey asked respondents in terms of the fairest possible tax system, what percentage of income they thought households at each income should pay in state and local taxes. They were presented with 10 different income levels, ranging from $5,000 to $2.5 million and asked to enter a percentage of income that they thought would be fair for that household to pay in state and local taxes.
Wallet Hub averaged the responses at each income level to determine the master “fair tax burden” for that level for the overall sample and separately for respondents identifying themselves as economic conservatives or economic liberals.
It then compared what Americans think is fair to the actual structure of state and local tax systems in the states.