… according to Truth in Accounting’s “Taxpayer Burden,” anyway.
With the recent release of our 2013 Financial State of the States report, taxpayers and citizens have a valuable resource for understanding trends in their state government finances.
Looking across the 50 states, as a general statement, we saw significant improvement in the financial conditions in many states in 2013. The number of states showing improvement in our “Taxpayer Burden” measure rose significantly, and for the first time since the watershed year in 2009.
Some states are doing better than others, of course. The Taxpayer Burden deteriorated in four states in each of the four years ended in 2013 – Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania. The average Taxpayer Burden in those four states in 2013 was roughly $24,000 – nearly four times the average for the other 46 states in the nation.
Among those four states, Illinois has easily the highest Taxpayer Burden of the four. Here’s a look at Illinois’s Taxpayer Burden, compared to the 50-state average, using our “State Data Lab” charting tool.
Users of our charting tool at State Data Lab can generate charts like these and send them to friends using easy-to-create links or picture files. Here’s a link to the chart above.
The State Data Lab charting tool is available for free, and can be accessed here.