Salon: Defiant Sam Brownback vows to move toward zero income tax — and make Kansas even more unequal
media mention“A study released this week underscores one of the most pernicious effects of such a tax regime: It exacerbates inequality. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that “[v]irtually every state’s tax system is fundamentally unfair,” with state and local taxes eating disproportionately into lower-income workers’ wages. But the effect was far worse in states with low or no income tax. In the Institute’s “Terrible 10″ states, the bottom quintile of wage earners pay up to seven times as much of their income in taxes as the top one percent does. The worst offender was Washington state, which has no individual income tax. The remaining states on the list were Florida, Texas, South Dakota, and Tennessee, which all lack individual income taxes; Illinois and Indiana, which tax individual incomes at a flat rate; and Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Kansas.”