mrken30

You also forget that property tax is one method of paying for the PERS deficit. In order to pay the guaranteed 7 to 8% interest on the savings the money has to come from somewhere.

Pulaski

I suspect that personal taxes are correlated with the standard of living of the poorest members of society. The better the social provisions for the poor, the higher the taxes. If I had to be utterly impoverished I suspect that I would prefer to be in Switzerland than in the UK and certainly not in the US.

petitefrancaise

Yes.
And I would go back to France.

Partially discharged

Derby Line Vermont was $2.11 a gallon yesterday. Literally 200 metres from the Canadian border. Needless to say a roaring trade. I calculate that to be $0.74 Cdn per litre.

mrken30

I had forgotten the US has some of the highest taxes in the Western world and the lowest in terms of social safety net.

Pulaski

That is pretty much the opposite of what I said - personal taxes in the US are relatively low, not least because of all the deductions you can make - IIRC we are only taxed by the IRS on about 3/5 of our gross W2 income.

Therefore the "social safety net" in the US is poor. .... Compared to most countries in Europe where taxes are high (in Scandinavia, notoriously so), and the social provision for those in poverty, much greater.

becks_r

Next year we will be in the position where we could live anywhere we want in US. So this is a very helpful thread, because it shows how different taxes are in different states.

I haven't been to many other places than NYS, but I was in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago and was told they have no clothing sales tax. So if I shopped every week for clothes now, I am sure living in Minneapolis would save me tons in tax. But I don't. Although Minneapolis was nice...

Property tax is high here too, but it also seems to be different between counties. We pay for village tax here that obviously wouldn't be applicable if we moved from the village.

mrken30

Depends on which State you live. I was paying 9% State income tax and around 8% use tax. Then with medicare, social security and unemployment insurance , my income tax was much the same. The only real deduction that made a difference was mortgage interest, but with no mortgage , standard deductions are not much different to personal allowance in the UK. then throw in medical expenses and property tax.

Pulaski

You don't have to live on the West Coast, any more than I had to live in NY.

Obviously it depends on your circumstances, but there are lots of opportunities to manage your tax bill in the US. Choosing which state to live in may be a good starting point. I quickly corrected my early mistake of trying to live in NY.

mrken30

True apart from family and work ties. We did move to Oregon so that we are now just paying income tax.

Paying 8% tax on a used car was something I wasn't expecting when I moved here.

kodokan

Yes! We discovered this little gem (at 7.5%) last month, when hubby bought a little summer runaround convertible (Miata..? It's the US version of an MX5).

My tax bugbear is being taxed at 2.5% for Columbus as a compulsory workplace deduction, when the tax rate for our nearby town of residence is 1.5%. Not only can we not get the other 1% credited back, but our town doesn't even accept the full credit for the already-paid 1.5% worth of tax dollars, instead only crediting them at 85% rather than a full 1:1. We end up with a very irksome tax bill of some hundreds to our town; it's not the amount that galls, it's the sneaky unfairness of it.

On the plus side, we make out like tax bandits each year by stuffing everything possible into retirement schemes and the HSA. And I have no intention of paying any taxes worth worrying about on that money on the way out, thanks to a plan involving early retirement, Roth IRA rollovers, ACA subsidies, and 1-2 kids in college.

Pulaski

Don't focus entirely on the tax rates, especially on property tax, you should also look at the value of the asset being taxed.

If you can buy a nice house for $200k you may be a lot better off than if you move somewhere where a family home costs $600k, even if the tax rate on the cheaper home is relatively high.

MidAtlantic

There are 5 states with no sales tax and 7 with no income tax and then there is every possible combination in between.

That is why it is difficult to make comparisons between states, let alone with the UK.

Pulaski

And the truth is that they all get their pound of flesh one way or another - most states take a similar amount of money from their residents, with only Alaska (with oil royalties) and Florida (with hotel taxes) as outliers at the low end and New York/New England and the West Coast as outliers at the upper end.

mrken30

Also blue States feed more homeless people and pay more to State employees and red states tend to be more conservative with their spending, just like in the UK, but colours reversed. We even have an arts tax, to pay for arts.