Where Do People Pay the Most in Property Taxes?
Property taxes are the primary tool for financing local governments and generate a significant share of state and local revenues.
6 min readHow does Texas’s tax code compare? Texas does not have an individual income tax. Texas does not have a corporate income tax but does levy a gross receipts tax. Texas has a 6.25 percent state sales tax rate, a max local sales tax rate of 2.00 percent, and an average combined state and local sales tax rate of 8.20 percent. Texas’s tax system ranks 13th overall on our 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index.
Each state’s tax code is a multifaceted system with many moving parts, and Texas is no exception. The first step towards understanding Texas’s tax code is knowing the basics. How does Texas collect tax revenue? Click the tabs below to learn more! You can also explore our state tax maps, which are compiled from our annual publication, Facts & Figures: How Does Your State Compare?
Property taxes are the primary tool for financing local governments and generate a significant share of state and local revenues.
6 min readPolicymakers at all levels of government should avoid the pitfalls of incentives. Instead, they should focus on creating a more efficient, neutral, and structurally sound tax code to the benefit of all types of business investment.
6 min readIf the policy goal of taxing cigarettes is to encourage cessation, vapor taxation must be considered a part of that policy design.
3 min readAs more and more states move away from throwback or throwout rules, those states that still impose these rules are becoming less attractive for businesses, which are incentivized to relocate their sales activities to non-throwback states.
6 min readCalifornia pumps out the highest state gas tax rate of 77.9 cents per gallon (cpg), followed by Illinois (66.5 cpg) and Pennsylvania (62.2 cpg).
2 min readHowever well-intended they may be, sales tax holidays remain the same as they always have been—ineffective and inefficient.
4 min readCompare the latest 2023 sales tax rates as of July 1st. Sales tax rate differentials can induce consumers to shop across borders or buy products online.
8 min readTaxes are the single most expensive ingredient in beer, costing more than the labor and raw materials combined.
3 min readTexas’s robust surpluses create an opportunity to use state funds to lower local property taxes. However, it remains important for legislators to pursue a principled approach to rate compression, rather than enacting a plan that will simply shift the tax burden in nonneutral ways.
3 min readOf all alcoholic beverages subject to taxation, stiff drinks—and all distilled spirits—face the stiffest tax rates. Like many excise taxes, the treatment of distilled spirits varies widely across the states.
3 min read