Where you live has a significant impact on whether you pay less taxes (or more) to local, state and federal governments each year. A new survey from GOBankingRates reveals that different tax factors in each state can cost (or save) a typical resident a lot of money — as much as $12,589 a year.
To find out the total burden the typical taxpayer faces, GOBankingRates surveyed the combined costs of income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes in each state.
The median per capita personal income is $44,891, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the total median taxes paid is $10,116. That means that typically, about 22.5 percent of an American taxpayer's incomes goes to the government.
Depending on where you live, your salary and the tax deductions you qualify for, your total tax costs could be far above or below these figures. Click through to see if your state has some of the lowest taxes, or if you can expect to pay much more to the government each year.
Methodology: To generate the total tax bill in each state, GOBankingRates looked at four key taxes Americans face: income taxes, property taxes, gas taxes and sales taxes.
Income tax bills reflect both state and federal income taxes, and were based on the 2014 per capita personal income reported in each state by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and generated using the calculator at TaxFormCalculator.com. Property tax bills were calculated using the mean effective property taxes in each state as reported by the Tax Foundation, applied to the state's median home value reported by the Zillow Home Value Index. Gas tax bills are based on per-gallon tax figures from the American Petroleum Institute, multiplied by an assumed gas usage of filling a 12-gallon gas tank each week for a year. Sales tax bill was calculated by applying the average combined state and local sales tax rates reported by the Tax Foundation to the average $84 self-reported daily spending, as reported by a Gallup Poll, for 365 days of the year. These four tax bills were added together to find the combined total dollar amount of taxes paid in each state, and states were ranked according to this figure.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/the-average-americans-tax-bill-in-every-state/ss-BBr30Xw?ocid=spartandhp
WASHINGTON — There are many ways to measure the taxes you pay, including the broadly encompassing “tax burden.” That’s the portion of the total personal income of residents in a state that are paid toward state and local taxes.
Looking at tax burden, Maryland ranks pretty high and Virginia ranks pretty low.
WalletHub combined the property tax burden with the individual income tax burden and the sales and gross receipts tax burden to come up with its overall tax burden rankings.
Maryland ranks No. 13 on this list, with a total tax burden of 9.38 percent. Virginia ranks No. 39, with a total tax burden of 7.80 percent.
New York has the highest state tax burden, at 13.12 percent, while Alaska has the lowest, at 5.18 percent.
Here are WalletHub’s tax-burden rankings by state:
http://d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/20494/geochart.html
http://wtop.com/money/2016/04/maryland-virginia-rank-tax-burden/
Holy Bible on list of 'challenged' books at libraries
NEW YORK (AP) -- On the latest list of books most objected to at public schools and libraries, one title has been targeted nationwide, at times for the sex and violence it contains, but mostly for the legal issues it raises.
The Bible.
"You have people who feel that if a school library buys a copy of the Bible, it's a violation of church and state," says James LaRue, who directs the Office for Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, which released its annual 10 top snapshot of "challenged" books on Monday, part of the association's "State of Libraries Report" for 2016.
"And sometimes there's a retaliatory action, where a religious group has objected to a book and a parent might respond by objecting to the Bible."
LaRue emphasized that the library association does not oppose having Bibles in public schools. Guidelines for the Office for Intellectual Freedom note that the Bible "does not violate the separation of church and state as long as the library does not endorse or promote the views included in the Bible." The ALA also favors including a wide range of religious materials, from the Quran to the Bhagavad Gita to the Book of Mormon. LaRue added that the association does hear of complaints about the Quran, but fewer than for the Bible.
The Bible finished sixth on a list topped by John Green's "Looking for Alaska," which has been cited for "offensive language" and sexual content. The runner-up, challenged for obvious reasons, was E L James' raunchy romance "Fifty Shades of Grey."
"I Am Jazz," a transgender picture book by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, was No. 3, followed by another transgender story, Susan Kuklin's "Beyond Magenta." The list also includes Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home," Craig Thompson's "Habibi," Jeanette Winter's "Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan" and David Leviathan's "Two Boys Kissing," with one objection being that it "condones public displays of affection."
"Many of the books deal with issues of diversity," LaRue said. "And that often leads to challenges."
The association bases its list on news reports and on accounts submitted from libraries and defines a challenge as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness." Just 275 incidents were compiled by the ALA, down from 311 the year before and one of the lowest on record. The ALA has long believed that for every challenge brought to its attention, four or five others are not reported. LaRue says the association does not have a number for books actually pulled in 2015.
Challenged works in recent years have ranged from the Harry Potter novels to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Discussing recent events, LaRue said he was concerned by legislation that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently vetoed forcing schools to warn parents if their children will be assigned books with sexually explicit content. A Fairfax County mother had protested the use of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Beloved" in her son's high school senior class. The 1987 novel set in the post-Civil War era includes scenes depicting sex, rape and bestiality and has appeared occasionally on the ALA challenged books list.
"We see the danger of censorship moving from the school library into the English classroom," LaRue said.'
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