Lowest-taxed group in each state of the United States

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/

I hate to be that guy but the top 5% pays nearly 50% of all income taxes paid.

Don't get me wrong the system is broken.

What's fucked is that when you have more, you can afford to lose a higher percentage of it. Like Chris Rock said, "if you're worth $30 million and you lose half, you're probably going to be alright. When you're worth $30 thousand and you lose half, somebody's gonna have to die!".

I am in a high income tax group here in Germany. I am happy to pay almost half of my income in taxes and social security/health insurance, if I see that it gets well invested. We are a society and the stronger should always carry the weaker (both financially and also in other aspects).

BUT: I am really pissed that I have to pay such a high percentage of what I have to work hard for, while those who did nothing but being born into a rich family pay hardly anyything at all. High income taxes should only be a thing when wealth taxes are also high, otherwise it only kills the will to work hard.

and then tax them again for good measure

I never understood what that means. Cannibalism is not good for your health.

Tax their wealth then 🤷🏻‍♂️

The rich don’t have income

They certainly have revenue.

From my limited experience, Minnesota is tremendously more progressive than their neighbors who make a really big deal about (poor quality) cheese. I met some younger folks in the Twin Cities who had escaped an otherwise bleak trajectory after growing up in Wisconsin.

If you haven't been, Minneapolis and St. Paul are beautiful cities filled with some lovely people. (They also had some terrorist cells some years back. People need something to do in the cold months, I suppose.) But there's culture and history and decent food and people are really kind and welcoming. And although the winters are cold, getting around in the skyway is a neat idea, despite making the downtown feel like a big indoor mall.

I haven't been to Wisconsin but I know people who have. It sounds like they're trying in some places (Milwaukee) but sometimes trying just isn't enough.

There actually was a study done about the divergence

You know, genuinely I have no idea. Especially because due south my GOD is Iowa completely NOT progressive in any way, shape, or form. If you ever drive through Iowa and start flicking through the radio stations it's terrifying. One radio station saying that "so and so democrat is the antichrist" is one too many but there were several.

Because my first thought would be urbanization, but really Wisconsin and Minnesota population distribution is not that different. It's also not bleed over from Canada because we're both about as connected as the other. Large forests and lakes between us. Prince was genuinely propping up the local music scene a TON before he died but... I don't think a single industry could be responsible for it. (it's a difference though) Then we even elected Jessie Ventura Governor, which... maybe scared other politicians to get in line? I genuinely don't know. I grew up in an incredibly conservative town in Minnesota but at the same time I had enough info to go "some of this sounds like utter bullshit". I remember listening to Joe Soucheray as a kid (even showed up on his radio broadcast at the fair once) it's not like conservatives aren't there, but not in the numbers.

It feels like a Springfield/Shelbyville rivalry: both areas were colonized by the same sorts of people, but Wisconsinites wanted to marry their cousins.

Corporations are people my friend, and they should be taxed as such. They should also get the death penalty for criminal acts.

The issue is that we tax labor. Creating a company is a choice. People who survive off trading their labor have no choice. They have to perform labor. Taxing survival is inherently flawed.

You only need a profitable side hustle because you're being underpaid and stuck in the capitalists' system. This side hustle is already taxed like a company, it would be on you to structure it so you are a laborer of the company while also covering the company tax.

Investments aren't labor so they can be tax as they are now.

The main problem is that you can't imagine a system that doesn't have a personal income tax. I don't have the time or patience to go through their history of this so I'll leave that as homework.

I think they're saying to tax the profits of companies instead of individual income tax.

the company, the one that literally pays me my money, doesn't understand my income? I mean sure, maybe i work at multiple companies, and receive multiple paychecks. But like, let's be honest here.

who cares, 90% of what is moving through the economy is corpo money anyway.

Where do you think business and property taxes come from?

says who? I said we can tax companies, so let's fucking tax companies, fuck companies.

This graphic is based on the percentage of income paid to taxes. A family making $500k a year paying a higher dollar amount than one making $50k a year is expected, but the higher earners should also be paying a higher percentage because 20% to them means a lot less sacrifice than 20% to a low income family. The sacrifice of not buying that third or fourth house is a lot less than whether the low income family goes to the doctor for a checkup.

the rich pay more in taxes each year than most people will make in their entire lives

Yet even when doing so they also take home more money each year than most people will make in their entire lives.

But you aren't paying the same amount proportional to what you have and that's the main point dude. You are comfortable paying that but people making less than you are using more of the limited resources they have to pay taxes while you are living your best life. At the end of the day it only takes so much money to have your needs met after that it's just extra but these people don't even have their needs met yet. If you are working that shouldn't be the case.

You pay more money total, but you have a lot more left over too. You don't pay more in Washington State unless you own an expensive property, since they don't have income tax. Well I guess you pay more if you buy more stuff, but that's a given.

Sounds like you're making money by working hard, which is a silly way to try to make a lot of money in a capitalist system. The hint is in the name, my friend: it's not called "workism".

If only we lived in an economy where your hard work was proportional to your income!

I don't see what the issue is. The graphic shows percentage. In absolute terms you pay more but in percentage you pay less.

For anyone not reading between the lines, taxes like sales taxes and property taxes are designed to disproportionately target those with lower income (i.e., regressive), while income tax is mostly supposed to target higher incomes (i.e. progressive).

So the red states actually have a less wealthy 1%, and therefore less inequality.

This is a wildly misleading chart at first glance.

States like California have both high sales tax and State income tax, so that's definitely a worse outcome.

The majority of people in the stat live in NYC.

I don't buy this, man. Groceries aren't taxxed, and I just don't see how a lower income individual could physically buy the same amount of taxed goods as a multimillionaire

As a proportion of their income maybe, but X% sale tax of one rich dude's glamour item(s) - expensive cars, boats jewelry, fashion, etc) could exceed the taxes from many many lower-income essentials.

...sales tax? I don't believe that that would be higher for lower income individuals, seeing as higher income people would purchase more things that are taxeable than lower income people. The only other tax I can think of is property tax, which again, I would expect to disproportionately be played by higher income people as they are more likely to own property. I'm not saying that taxing the rich is bad, I'm just saying that there is positively no chance that rich people pay less taxes even if you exclude state income tax.

Wealthy people dont pay income very much at all, their income is made via capital gains. Also consumption based taxes are the primary thing that this would be so the richer you are the less this will be as a percent of your income.