Saturday, July 18, 2009

Unemployment and State Taxes: Myth or Reality?

There has been talk that states with low tax rates have lower unemployment than states with greater tax rates. We have looked at the data in some detail and the conclusion seems to be that it makes no difference. Thus New Hampshire, Florida and Texas are really no different if we look at all the states.

First we look at unemployment as of June 2009 and the maximum tax rate in the states. We show this below.



















We have analyzed this data and there does not seem to be any significant trend.

Then we looked at 2008 versus 2009 and we shown that below:



















Here the trend seems to be an increase uniformly across the board with little significant difference.

Finally we looked at percent increases from 2008 to 2009 versus the state tax rate. This we show below:



















The trend line is flat. There may be great variance but little trend. Thus we conclude that state taxation rates are not a driver or selective agent for unemployment.