Comparing Income Tax Liability Across States: Where Does Missouri Rank?

Authors

R. W. Hafer, Lindenwood University
Michael Rathbone, Show-Me Institute

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Center for Economics and the Environment: Policy Series

Abstract

The answer to the question “Is Missouri a low-tax state?” depends on the approach used. This paper addresses the question by comparing income taxes. Specifically, for purposes of comparison we calculate, for each state, the income tax liability for a representative family of four earning the national median income. With this information we then compare the income tax liability across states, ranking them from highest to lowest. Using our approach, we find that Missouri ranks in the top half of states according to income tax liability. In other words, our ranking shows that Missouri is not a low-tax state.

Publication Date

2017

Comments

R.W. Hafer is Director, Center for Economics and the Environment, Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise, Professor of Economics, Lindenwood University, and a scholar at the Show-Me Institute.

At the time of publication, Michael Rathbone was a policy researcher at the Show-Me Institute

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Hafer, R. W. and Rathbone, Michael, "Comparing Income Tax Liability Across States: Where Does Missouri Rank?" (2017). Center for Applied Economics. 23.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/cee/23