Posted by Bob Lord
Well, our friends at the Arizona legislature have a new distinction of which I'm sure they're quite proud. Arizona has the seventh most regressive tax structure of all 50 states and DC, based on a study by the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy. According to the ITEP study, the bottom 20% of Arizonans by income pay 12.9% of their income in state and local taxes (property, income and sales combined), the middle 20% pay 9.4% of their income, while the top 1% pay just 4.7%.
The ITEP study is located here. The first page has a very well produced interactive map where can you point to any state to see its state tax distribution. If you like this sort of thing, you should check it out.
Shortly after I reported on Phil Mickelson whining about his state tax burden, Al Melvin invited Phil to move to Arizona, because we treat millionaires so much better here. Now Al has data to back up his invitation.
As Leona Helmsley famously said, "only little people pay taxes."
Nice try, but your sleight of hand falls short. The import of your prior comment was that I should have known Tiger Woods’ move to Florida was tax-motivated without doing a google search, either because it was so intuitively obvious or so widely known. If I needed to do a google search to find that his move was tax motivated, the wording of your comment would have been inappropriate. Go back and check.
And, by the way, if my original post was so off base, why do you suppose Mickelson apologized for his remarks? http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-phil-mickelson-taxes-20130123,0,1236129.story
Here’s why. Even though you don’t understand how grossly insensitive his remarks were, he does. So, he apologized.
Looks like it is your “critical thinking skills” that may have been the ones lacking Bob.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-tiger-woods-torrey-pines-20130122,0,878458.story
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/22/tiger-woods-i-left-california-over-tax-rates-too-video/
Additionally, in your response to me on the prior thread you ask: “Why are you so sure Tiger Woods moved to Florida because he was obsessed about his taxes? Do you know this to be the case, or are you just using those critical thinking skills of yours?” A simple google search would have verified that tax rates were, indeed, a prime factor in Tiger’s move to Florida.
In the vary same response you state: “….there was no issue that pro golfers would have been focused on uniquely such that they as a group should be more uniform in their vote than any other voting group.” Did those 64 golfers tell you that Bob or was that a result of your “critical thinking skills”?