ALEC Releases 2009 Rich States, Poor States

The American Legislative Exchange Council has released this week the second edition of Rich States, Poor States, authored by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Jonathan Williams.

According to the Executive Summary, the 15 policy factors used to calculate the scores are:

• Highest Marginal Personal Income Tax Rate

• Highest Marginal Corporate Income Tax Rate

• Personal Income Tax Progressivity

• Property Tax Burden

• Sales Tax Burden

• Tax Burden From All Remaining Taxes

• Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax (Yes or No)

• Recently Legislated Tax Policy Changes

• Debt Service as a Share of Tax Revenue

• Public Employees Per 1,000 Residents

• Quality of State Legal System

• State Minimum Wage

• Workers’ Compensation Costs

• Right-to-Work State (Yes or No)

• Tax or Expenditure Limits

ALEC finds the top ten best states (in order from one to ten) are: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. There are 4 overlapping states with the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index: Wyoming (1), South Dakota (2), Nevada (3), Texas (7).

ALEC’s bottom ten states (in order from 50-41) are: New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Hawaii. Six of these states overlap with the ten worst states in our Index: New Jersey (50), New York (49), California (48), Ohio (47), Rhode Island (46), Vermont (43).