Connecticut Residents Have 5th Highest Tax Burden: Report

CONNECTICUT — Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one who lives in the state, a new report claims Connecticut residents had one of the very highest tax burdens in the nation last year.

Personal finance website WalletHub released its data as the state and federal governments have extended their tax filing deadlines by a month, in the wake of a particularly brutal 12 months of financial discord for many.

The discrepancy in the tax burdens among the states is startling. The average U.S. household pays over $8,800 in federal income taxes, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that's just Uncle's cut. When it comes to state and local taxes, residents of the most tax-expensive states can pay three times more than those who enjoy more frugal local governments.

The actual effective hit your wallet takes is not so black and white. Since the tax code is so complicated and has rules based on individual household characteristics, it's hard for the average person to get a handle on just how deep the taxman's hand is inside your purse.

One simple ratio known as the "tax burden" helps cut through the confusion. Unlike tax rates, which vary widely based on an individual’s circumstances, tax burden measures the proportion of total personal income that residents pay toward state and local taxes. And it isnt uniform across the U.S., either.

In order to determine which states tax their residents most aggressively, WalletHub compared the 50 states based on the three components of state tax burden — property taxes, individual income taxes, and sales and excise taxes — as a share of total personal income.

Overall, Connecticut had the 5th highest tax burden, and came in 6th in the category of "individual income tax burden. The property taxes here were the 7th heaviest lift nationwide. Total sales and excise taxes in Connecticut make for 2.82 percent of total personal income, placing the state at No. 39 in that category.

Only New York, Hawaii, Vermont and Maine offered their residents a lighter tax burden than Connecticut.

The states with the highest individual income tax as a percent of persona income were New York, Oregon, Maryland, California and Minnesota. The so-called "rad states" had a lower tax burden than their blue counterparts, 19.32 percent compared to 31.37 percent, on the average.