Taxes and jobs

Today's Union Leader home page boasts that New Hampshire imposes the lowest burden in state and local taxes of all 50 states.

Using 2004 data, the rankings are obtained by comparing the total amount of personal income earned by state residents with the total amount of taxes raised by state and local governments.

Economist Dennis Delay, who compiled the figures, said “New Hampshire again has the lowest tax burden in the country even with property taxes and statewide property taxes. That’s good news for the state.”

According to the figures, New Hampshire residents pay 12.3 percent of their personal income in taxes, while the national average is 15.1 percent.

[...]

Delay said New Hampshire has had the lowest tax burden for several years in a row. He said the ranking is good news for both the residents of the state and for the businesses.

Evidence to back up Delay's claim that low taxes are good for residents and good for businesses appears in a companion article, Hot job market greeting grads.

It was only a few years ago that new graduates had to scramble to find jobs, as many companies responded to the uncertain economic times by curtailing hiring and expansion.

But that seems to have changed, according to Tom Horgan, president and CEO of the New Hampshire College and University Council, a nonprofit consortium of 16 institutions of higher education in the state.

“We did go through a period of time where people were trying to do more with less, and I think we’re probably — hopefully — entering a period where we’re going to do more with more,” Horgan said.

His organization saw “a significant increase” in the number of companies that participated in its annual job fair on March 31, he said. “We had 69 companies last year who bought booths from us, and we had 94 this year.

OK, I'm willing to give the Bush Administration a little credit, too.  It's not just New Hampshire's economy that is humming right now, but truth be told I'll take New Hampshire over just about anyplace else.

Comments

[Major Mike]

Interesting. This table (http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxburdens.html) shows New Hampshire with the second lowest tax burden, with Alaska as the lowest (instead of the highest, as reported by the Union Leader).
Congratulations still to New Hampshire, but it would be interesting to find out how Alaska is the most expensive on their sheet, and the least on this ranking. It sounds positively Biblical - "the first now shall later be last" - but I don't think Jesus had state tax burdens in mind when he said that.

[Tom Bowler]

Very interesting. I followed your link to Retirement Living where I found this:

"In calculating the tax burden of a state, total taxes are divided by total income, as reported by the BEA. High-income taxpayers tend to increase the average tax burden -- just as including low-income taxpayers decrease it.

That leads me to think all taxes are included in their calculations, including federal income taxes. That might explain the difference, since the Union Leader article talked only about state and local taxes.