We all look forward to April 15, especially in the high tax states of New York and New Jersey. But there are a few bits of good news in a new study.
In New York State, people pay about 12% of their income in state and local taxes, according to a study by the personal finance website WalletHub.
“New York is consistently at the top of this list every year so that isn’t a surprise,” said analyst Cassandra Happe, “but it was encouraging to see that they actually improved a little bit when it came to the individual income tax as a share of personal income.”
New York fell to second behind California. But better news in New Jersey — it was way down the list at number 30 for the percentage of your income that goes to the tax man.
However, the share of income in New York going to sales tax is down, said Happe.
“Last year they ranked 24th overall for that and this year they ranked 31st, so that’s a little bit of an improvement there,” she said.
New Jersey was near the bottom of the list on that one — 44th of the 50 states.
But when it came to property taxes as a percent of income, New Jersey was third.
“That actually is a little bit higher for that particular metric compared to New York,” she said. New York ranked 5th for that particular metric.”
Only Maine and Vermont outranked New Jersey on property taxes as a percent of income.