The Garden State may be able to boast about the Boss and its great beaches but the Garden State has the least competitive tax code in the nation. That’s according to the 2017 State Business Tax Climate Index released by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
The index is based on an analysis of each state’s tax code using over 100 tax variables in five different tax categories (corporate, individual income, sales, property, and unemployment insurance). As you might imagine, states are penalized for overly complex, burdensome, and economically harmful tax codes and rewarded for transparent and neutral tax codes that, according to the Tax Foundation, do not distort business decisions.
“Our goal with the State Business Tax Climate Index is to start a conversation between taxpayers and policymakers about how their states fare against the rest of the country,” said Tax Foundation Policy Analyst Jared Walczak. “While there are many ways to show how much a state collects in taxes, the Index is designed to show how well states structure their tax systems, and to provide a roadmap for improvement.” This year, taxpayers definitely have something to talk about.
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