An Island of Freedom

The 2024 Business Tax Climate is in, and look on the map below at how New Hampshire is an island of freedom in New England. The Tax Foundation’s Jared Walczak, Andrey Yushkov, and Katherine Loughead report on the 2024 release of the Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index. 

The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index enables business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare. While there are many ways to show how much is collected in taxes by state governments, the Index is designed to show how well states structure their tax systems and provides a road map for improvement.

The 10 best states in this year’s Index are:

1. Wyoming
2. South Dakota
3. Alaska
4. Florida
5. Montana
6. New Hampshire
7. Nevada
8. Utah
9. North Carolina
10. Indiana

The absence of a major tax is a common factor among many of the top 10 states. Property taxes and unemployment insurance taxes are levied in every state, but there are several states that do without one or more of the major taxes: the corporate income tax, the individual income tax, or the sales tax. Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming have no corporate or individual income tax (though Nevada imposes gross receipts taxes); Alaska has no individual income or state-level sales tax; Florida has no individual income tax; and New Hampshire and Montana have no sales tax.

This does not mean, however, that a state cannot rank in the top 10 while still levying all the major taxes. Indiana and Utah, for example, levy all the major tax types but do so with low rates on broad bases.

The 10 lowest-ranked, or worst, states in this year’s Index are:

41. Rhode Island
42. Hawaii
43. Vermont
44. Minnesota
45. Maryland
46. Massachusetts
47. Connecticut
48. California
49. New York
50. New Jersey

The states in the bottom 10 tend to have a number of afflictions in common: complex, nonneutral taxes with comparatively high rates. New Jersey, for example, is hampered by some of the highest property tax burdens in the country, has the highest-rate corporate income taxes in the country, and has one of the highest-rate individual income taxes. Additionally, the state has a particularly aggressive treatment of international income, levies an inheritance tax, and maintains some of the nation’s worst-structured individual income taxes.

Action Line: New Hampshire was #1 on Your Survival Guy’s list of 2023 Super States. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, and be among the first to receive updates to Your Survival Guy’s Super States.