What do state sales taxes look like nationwide? #map
Posted By RichC on February 17, 2024
As an entrepreneur who has owned a business that sells in several Ohio counties and collects sales taxes (all counties are different), I do monitor the steady sales tax percentage increase over the decades of doing business. It is also interesting to know how managing a business in Ohio compares to other states (click map for larger).
The TaxFoundation has always been a great place to go in monitoring changes and what state offers a tax friendly climate for business (and overall personal State and Local tax liabilities). On a side note, here’s a tidbit: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recent move from Washington state to Florida saved him enough money in “state” capital gains tax on selling some of his $AMZN shares to purchase his $500,000 yacht (mentioned on FoxBusiness 2/13/2024 and Seattle Times – quote below).
Jeff Bezos didn’t cite taxes among the reasons for his recent move to Miami from the Seattle region, but the fiscal benefits of his relocation to the Sunshine State are becoming very obvious.
Leaving Washington, which in 2022 introduced a 7% tax on capital gains, could have saved Bezos $288 million in taxes after he unloaded $4 billion of Amazon stock in the past week.
Bezos said in November that was he moving to Florida, which doesn’t tax capital gains, from Seattle to be closer to his parents and the Cape Canaveral operations of his space-exploration company Blue Origin. The announcement came a week before he put in place a 10(b)5-1 plan to sell as many as 50 million Amazon shares, worth potentially more than $8 billion.
The five states with the highest average combined state and local sales tax rates are Louisiana (9.56 percent), Tennessee (9.55 percent), Arkansas (9.45 percent), Washington (9.38 percent), and Alabama (9.29 percent). The five states with the lowest average combined rates are Alaska (1.82 percent), Hawaii (4.50 percent), Wyoming (5.44 percent), Maine (5.50 percent), and Wisconsin (5.70 percent).
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Conclusion
Sales taxes are just one part of an overall tax structure and should be considered in context. For example, Tennessee has high sales taxes but no income tax, whereas Oregon has no sales tax but high income taxes. While many factors influence business location and investment decisions, sales taxes are something within policymakers’ control that can have immediate impacts.
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